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Biographical Memoirs Volume 90 (2009) / Chapter Skim
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JULIUS ADAMS STRATTON
Pages 372-395

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From page 372...
... MIT Museum
From page 373...
... His mother, Laura Adams Stratton, was an accomplished pianist. Following his father's retirement in 1906, the family moved to Germany, where young Julius attended school through age nine and became fluent in German.
From page 374...
... Stratton had been admitted to Stanford for matriculation in September 1919 when he signed on for the summer right before as radio operator aboard the SS Western Glen out of Seattle headed for Japan and Manchuria. The ship encountered a typhoon near Kobe, Japan, and went to the rescue of another vessel in distress nearby.
From page 375...
... From September 1924 through June 1926 Stratton worked as a research assistant in communications at MIT and studied for his master's degree in electrical engineering, graduating with a thesis titled "A High Frequency Bridge." During this period he wrote to his father with remarkable prescience about the trajectory of his career: "I will admit that an ultimate goal which would cause me complete satisfaction would be the administration of such an institution as Tech or the Bureau of Standards at Washington."2 Upon completion of his master's degree, Stratton was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to return to Europe, where many universities were seething with excitement over the latest developments in quantum theory and atomic structure. He enrolled for a doctor of science degree in mathematical physics at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH)
From page 376...
... . He then returned to MIT as an assistant professor in electrical engineering, a modern physicist embedded in an engineering department.
From page 377...
... He also studied the possibility of using intense electromagnetic radiation to disperse fog, and made measurements of the field of an antenna over the open sea, employing the Mayflower, a dirigible loaned to him by the Goodyear Zeppelin Company. He prepared and published, through the National Academy of Sciences, tables of spheroidal functions -- solutions of differential equations arising in his study of antennas.
From page 378...
... But the invention of the microwave cavity magnetron a few months after war broke out made possible the creation of radar systems that would prove remarkably effective as a tool of war. Unsure that they could develop the invention at home under wartime conditions, British scientists in August 1940 sent the Tizard Mission, (more formally "The British Technical and Scientific Mission to the United States")
From page 379...
... The rapid pace of development and of improvements to radar equipment at the Rad Lab was not matched, unfortunately, by the American military bureaucracy, which proved so lethargic that the troops usually had "the third best [radar] set." Stratton outlined the problem in a letter to his Rad Lab colleague Edward Bowles: Despite sincere good will on the part of individual officers I am nevertheless impelled to the belief that the planning and implementation of a rational program and the procurement of radar equipment is proceeding with intolerable slowness.
From page 380...
... When the vessel pulled into port, the commander of the British garrison was surprised to see the archbishop because nearly all British soldiers training in Iceland had been quietly returned to Britain to prepare for imminent invasion. The commander, assuming that the cleric would be upset about having made the dangerous trip for no reason, summoned the courage to explain over dinner.
From page 381...
... While interdepartmental laboratories are now common in universities, the novel idea, in 1946, of a laboratory with its own director, in which faculty would have dual loyalties both to the lab and to their home department, and in which technical and research staff would be appointed without review by a department, received mixed reviews from the MIT faculty. Further, there was concern about the appro
From page 382...
... Charles Stark Draper's Instrumentation Laboratory (originally affiliated with MIT's Aeronautics Department, later to become the independent Draper Laboratory) expanded to add the Apollo mission to its development of inertial navigation systems for the military services.
From page 383...
... His presidency saw much physical expansion at MIT. New buildings for Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Biology, and the Center for Materials Science and Engineering filled former parking lots.
From page 384...
... Sherwood in support of an affiliated academy of engineers.12 Such an affiliated academy, he argued could result in a large and powerful organization competing with the NAS. It will be able to enlist strong support from industry as well as government.
From page 385...
... Stratton's persuasiveness and clarity of vision were important in shaping the evolution of the enterprise, now commonly referred to simply as "The National Academies." THE FORD FOUNDATION Following his retirement as president of MIT in 1966, Stratton was elected chairman of the board of the Ford Foundation, at that time the largest grant-making charitable agency in the nation. He had served as a trustee of the foundation since 1955.
From page 386...
... When Stratton retired, the board concluded its resolution with the following sentences: "He has demonstrated in every word and action the meaning of the standards to which he has held us all: that we are here to serve not our own ends but those for which the Ford Foundation is chartered. He leaves the foundation stronger than he found it, and all who care for its work are deeply in his debt."16
From page 387...
... "The need to develop an adequate national ocean program arises from a combination of rapidly converging and interacting forces: world population growth; the need for sources of protein; ocean industries as components of inviting opportunities for economic growth." Under Stratton COMSER was charged with recommending "National Policy to develop, encourage and maintain a coordinated, comprehensive, and long range program in marine science for the benefit of mankind .
From page 388...
... Other recommendations relating to international cooperation and to the conservation of marine resources were strongly opposed by fishing and other commercial marine interests, and did not lead to hoped-for changes in policy. Stratton's close relationship with MIT continued during his time at the Ford Foundation.
From page 389...
... When it became clear in late 2002 that help was needed to complete the book, MIT commissioned Philip N Alexander, a research associate in the MIT Program in Writing, to complete the research, to bring together the separately written chapters, to write the last six chapters, and to make it whole.
From page 390...
... Bowles, May 4, 1943, MIT Archives Manuscript Collection, MC-341, Series III, Box 29.
From page 391...
... 15. Stratton Oral History, Ford Foundation, MIT Archives Manuscript Collection MC-341, Series III, Box 12, pp.
From page 392...
... :95-105. 1927 Zerstreuungskoeffizient für kurze Wellen nach der Schrödingerschen Theorie.
From page 393...
... Elliptic Cylinder and Spheroidal Wave Functions. New York: John Wiley.
From page 394...
... 394 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1961 Physics and engineering in a free society.
From page 395...
... stratton julius adams 395


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