Frederick Emmons Terman - Technology Pioneer
Posted by: DougK
N 37° 23.880 W 122° 07.776
10S E 577040 N 4139380
Fred Terman is often called the "Father of Silicon Valley".
Waymark Code: WM6BNE
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 05/09/2009
Views: 9
Description: See Wikipedia entry for links from this text:
Frederick Emmons Terman (June 7, 1900 in English, Indiana – December 19, 1982) was an American academic. He is widely credited (together with William Shockley) with being the father of Silicon Valley.
Terman completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry and his master's degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University. His father Lewis Terman, the man who popularized the IQ test in America, was a professor at Stanford. Terman went on to earn an ScD in electrical engineering from MIT in 1924. His advisor at MIT was Vannevar Bush, who created the National Science Foundation.
From 1925 to 1941 Terman designed a course of study and research in electronics at Stanford that focused on work with vacuum tubes, circuits, and instrumentation. He also wrote Radio Engineering (first edition in 1932; second edition, much improved, in 1938; third edition in 1947 with added coverage of new technologies developed during World War II; fourth edition in 1955 with a new title, Electronic and Radio Engineering), one of the most important books on electrical and radio engineering, and to this day a good reference on those subjects. Terman's students at Stanford included Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr., William Hewlett, and David Packard. Just before World War II, Terman decided to dedicate some of the unused land on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto to an industrial park, called Stanford Industrial Park. He encouraged Hewlett and Packard to form a company (Hewlett-Packard) and house it on campus.
During World War II, Terman directed a staff of more than 850 at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard University. This organization was the source of Allied jammers to block enemy radar, tunable receivers to detect radar signals, and aluminum strips (“chaff”) to produce spurious reflections on enemy radar receivers. These countermeasures significantly reduced the effectiveness of radar-directed anti-aircraft fire.
After the war Terman was appointed dean of engineering at Stanford University. He was awarded the IRE Medal of Honor in 1950 for "his many contributions to the radio and electronic industry as teacher, author, scientist and administrator", and served as provost at Stanford from 1955 to 1965. During his tenure, Terman greatly expanded the science, statistics and engineering departments in order to win more research grants from the Department of Defense. These grants, in addition to the funds that the patented research generated, helped to catapult Stanford into the ranks of the world's first class educational institutions, as well as spurring the growth of Silicon Valley. In 1964, Dr. Terman became a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Commemoration
• The Frederick Emmons Terman Award was established in 1969 by the American Society for Engineering Education, Electrical and Computer Engineering Division. It is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard and is bestowed annually upon an outstanding young electrical engineering educator.
• The Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Scholastic Award is presented to the students that rank academically in the top five percent of the graduating senior class from the Stanford University School of Engineering.
• Stanford's Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Center is named in his honor.
• Terman Middle School, in Palo Alto, California is named after Frederick Terman, a longtime resident.
Date of birth: 06/07/1900
Date of death: 12/19/1982
Area of notoriety: Science/Technology
Marker Type: Plaque
Setting: Indoor
Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Mon-Sun: 8AM-6PM
Fee required?: No
Web site: [Web Link]
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