Lambert Tyler Dolphin
May 24, 1932-Jan. 1, 2024
Santa Clara, California
Submitted by Matt G Podoll
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.”
Tags: teacher/educator
