Fred 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1924. His advisor at MIT was Vannevar Bush, who first proposed what became the National Science Foundation.
He returned to Stanford in 1925 as a member of the engineering faculty. 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 1937; 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. He encouraged his students to form their own companies and personally invested in many of them, resulting in firms such as Litton Industries and Hewlett-Packard. Terman was president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1941.
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 returned to Stanford and was appointed dean of the School of Engineering. In 1951 he spearheaded the creation of Stanford Industrial Park (now Stanford Research Park), whereby the University leased portions of its land to high-tech firms. Companies such as Varian Associates, Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, and Lockheed Corporation moved into Stanford Industrial Park and made the mid-Peninsula area into a hotbed of innovation which eventually became known as Silicon Valley.
He 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.
Joseph Mayo Pettit was born July 15, 1916, in Rochester, Minnesota. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley where he received his BS degree in electrical engineering in 1938. At Stanford University, he earned the degree of Engineer in 1940 and a PhD in 1942. From 1940 to 1942, Pettit served as an instructor at the University of California. He then joined the World War II radar countermeasures project at the Radio Research Laboratory of Harvard University.
Following the war effort, Pettit became supervising engineer with Airborne Instruments Laboratory, Inc. in New York where he remained until joining the faculty of Stanford University in 1947. At Stanford he was named Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1954, and became Dean of the School of Engineering in 1958 a post which he held until 1972 when he became President of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Pettit spent almost his entire career in engineering education. As a teacher at Stanford, he developed two textbooks: “Electronics Switching Timing and Pulse Circuits” in 1959, and “Electronic Amplifier Circuits” in 1961, the latter with M.M. McWhorter. He also coauthored “Electronic Measurements” with Fred Terman in 1952. Pettit was an active member of the IEEE and its predecessor organizations for almost 50 years. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) in 1954 and served on their Board of Directors during 1954-55. He also served as a member of the IRE Fellow and Education Committees and was elected a life member of IEEE in 1982.
Among his many activities, Pettit was instrumental in founding WESCON, having served as Chairman of the Pacific Coast IRE Convention in 1949. Recently, he was founding chairman of SOUTHCON, established in Atlanta during 1981.
Pettit was awarded the Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1949 for his World War II contributions. He served on the National Science Board from 1977 to 1982, and was an advisor to the National Science Foundation in various other capacities. Among his international activities, he was an advisor from 1965 to 1973 to the Ford Foundation in Mexico and Latin America, served as a technical consultant to the Organization of American States from 1967 to 1972, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering of Mexico in 1981. Pettit was awarded the 1983 IEEE Founders Medal “For contributions in electronic and engineering education; for leadership in engineering organizations; and for service to the world as an advisor to government and industry.”
William “Bill” Redington Hewlett (May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Hewlett received his Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1934, a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1936, and the degree of Electrical Engineer from Stanford in 1939.
Hewlett attended undergraduate classes taught by Fred Terman at Stanford and became acquainted with David Packard. He and Packard began discussing forming a company in August 1937, and founded Hewlett-Packard Company as a partnership on January 1, 1939. A flip of a coin decided the ordering of their names. He was president of HP from 1964 to 1977, and served as CEO from 1968 to 1978, when he was succeeded by John A. Young. He remained chairman of the executive committee until 1983, and then served as vice chairman of the board until 1987. He died of heart failure in Palo Alto, California, on January 12, 2001, and was interred at Los Gatos Memorial Park, San Jose, California.
David Packard (September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was a co-founder, with William Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–1964), CEO (1964–1968), and Chairman of the Board (1964–1968, 1972–1993). He served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969–1971 during the Nixon administration. Packard served as President of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) from 1976 to 1981. He was also chairman of the Board of Regents from 1973 to 1982. Packard was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 and is noted for many technological innovations and philanthropic endeavors
