Lambert T. Dolphin Jr.
5-24-1932 - 1-1-2024
Lambert Tyler Dolphin Jr. passed away in Santa Clara on January 1, 2024 after a
brief illness . His body is laid to rest in the Purissima Cemetery (Spanish for “The
Purest”) in Half Moon Bay.
Lambert was born in Shoshone Idaho on May 5 1932 to Lambert and Audrey
Dolphin. Sadly, Lambert’s parents separated when he was 12, and he moved
with his mother and sister, Susanne, to San Diego during the early years of
World War II. Two years later Lambert’s mother died of kidney disease at 39.
Despite these horrible family setbacks, Lambert was voted “Most likely to
succeed” in High School. Lambert received an AB degree with high honors in
physics and distinction in mathematics from San Diego State University in June
1954. Lambert’s academic prowess kept him from going to war as his
professors wrote letters to the draft board that his potential in math and physics
was worthy of keeping him in school. His professors also wrote
recommendations to Stanford for grad school.
After two years of graduate study in Physics and Electrical Engineering at
Stanford University (1954-1956), Lambert joined the staff of SRI International
(formerly Stanford Research Institute), in Menlo Park, California where he
remained almost continuously for the next 30 years. He bought a house in
Cupertino, and later relocated to a condominium he bought from Carl and Carol
Gallivan (of PBC) in Santa Clara where he lived until his passing. He referred to it
as “The Pomeroy Palace”.
Notably, Lambert became a Christian in 1962 after a long search through the
religions and philosophies of the world. While at SRI, his team got into ground
penetrating radar and they went all over the world looking for resources and
treasures, including the pyramids in Egypt, mines in California and Nevada, and
under the ocean, searching for lost treasure on ancient shipwrecks on John
Wayne’s yacht. In addition, Lambert once picked up Steve Jobs while Steve
was hitchhiking to UC Berkeley, and this sparked a friendship for years between
the two men. In fact, Lambert’s Sony Trinitron TV was featured as the monitor in
an early magazine ad for Macintosh!
Lambert left his position at SRI as a Senior Research Physicist in 1987 to pursue
small-scale independent geophysical consulting services, and to devote the bulk
of his time to Bible teaching, writing, and Christian counseling. He travelled to
many places and visited Israel 9 times. As a member of Peninsula Bible Church
in Palo Alto, Lambert, along with Mark Verber created a website for Ray
Stedman’s sermons in April of 1995, raystedman.org. Lambert was also tasked
with transferring all of Ray Stedman’s reel-to-reel sermons to a digital format
with Bill Rust.
Lambert started Lambert Dolphin Ministries under ldolphin.org to house his own
content, including his life experience, studies of his understanding of the Bible,
and Ray Stedman’s work. The site has swelled to 2300 pages. In his last few
years Lambert sent daily email “newsletters” that were all scripture based with a
life application and always would include a sermon from Ray. Lambert was with
the founders of Blue Letter Bible when it went live in 1996, and has always had a
special and close relationship with BLB and Sowing Circle who have hosted his
websites and handled his ministry donations for many years.
Lambert unselfishly devoted his time, energy and money to anyone who came to
visit him, seeing the potential for greatness in everyone and unconditionally
loving them. In his early days at Stanford, he rented a house in Los Altos called
“The Mesa” and it functioned as a sort of hippie house for Christians with
people sleeping on the floors etc. Lambert always pointed those who became
his friends into a relationship with Jesus and unashamedly told them that Jesus
Christ is the answer to life. There are countless people he touched with his
channeling of the love of Christ. Many people credit Lambert with saving their
life. He loved and cherished young people and made a point to want to get to
know everything about them. Lambert would say “I would do anything for you!”
and he would. As Ray Stedman said: “There is no limit to what God will do with
a man when the man doesn’t care who gets the credit.”
