Radar: Scientist Stats
Radar: Scientist Stats
James Clerk Maxwell
Born and Died: 1831 - 1879
Country: Scottish-born British citizen
Scientific Field(s): Mathematical Physicist
Short Bio: Even when he was a child, people knew Maxwell would go far, given that he published his first academic paper at the age of 16. This was before people had cars, so he had much more time on his hands than the modern 16-year-old (probably).
Despite his groundbreaking work in unifying electric and magnetic fields, Maxwell started his career most interested in optics and color. Given that light's a piece of the electromagnetic spectrum, we suppose that it isn't such a big leap, but his main focus in the early part of his career was figuring out how many rings Saturn has.
He also worked on thermodynamics and color perception. In fact, he was very interested in photography. Through all this research into color, photography, and Saturn, Maxwell discovered that gas particles could be described by a mathematical distribution. In case you're wondering, a mathematical distribution uses vectors to relate position, surface area, and volumes in terms of vector fields. Once you can classify everything in terms of vectors, you can "count" the vectors of certain sizes and orientations. It's pretty great.
If Maxwell had a yearbook, the front and back pages were probably filled with comments about his "eccentric" and "dafty" personality, given the whole obsession with Saturn thing—not to mention the fact that he memorized the Christian bible in his free time.
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Heinrich Hertz
Born and Died: 1857 – 1894
Country: Germany
Scientific Field(s): Physics, Engineering
Short Bio: If anyone could be called a math fanboy, that title would definitely be given to Heinrich Hertz—the man who famously said that "mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers."
We aren't completely sure how an inanimate proof could be wise, but you do you Hertz.
Before he decided a life of math was the way to go, Hertz changed his mind about his career a billion times, by our estimates. Between technical school, private tutoring, and weekly technical college classes, Hertz thought he wanted to go into
The real challenge was finding the topic that could hold his interest for long.
When he finally settled on physics, he took the academic world by a storm, figuring out how to produce radio frequency waves in real life by inventing an instrument based on Maxwell's equations. He was really interested in Meteorology and was trying to figure out how to measure things like clouds and rain. Although others were already developing radio-frequency applications to help understand weather and meteorology, Hertz decided that a "wireless" application was possible if you used Maxwell's equations.
Nobody really realized the extent of his brilliance at the time. Now the Hertz, a measurement of one cycle per second in the radio frequency spectrum, is named after him. That's when you know you've made it in physics.
In chemistry they give you an element on the Periodic Table.
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Christian Hülsmeyer
Born and Died: 1881 – 1957
Country: Germany
Scientific Field(s): Engineering, Physics
Short Bio: Christian Hülsmeyer was an entrepreneurial and engineering visionary. Although he never finished college, he received an apprenticeship in electrical engineering at the Siemens & Halske factory in Bremen, Germany, which led to a huge invention in terms of its influence on radar. (In terms of its commercial success, it was a flop.)
His invention, the Telemobiloscope, was a radio frequency warning system that detected when metallic vessels were approaching. The point was to give boats a heads-up on possible collisions during times when they couldn't see each other, like in the foggy conditions. His motivation? A friend of his killed by a ship-collision accident, making him want fewer potential friends to be hurt by weather with low visibility.
The Telemobiloscope was the first piece of wireless radio frequency technology and it paved the way for radars, which is just proof that you don't need to complete college to make big waves in the world.
Sir Edward Victor Appleton
Born and Died: 1892 – 1965
Country: United Kingdom
Scientific Field(s): Physics
Short Bio: Sir Edward Victor Appleton's work in the natural sciences helped give some fundamental principles for radar technology. After earning his B.A. at St. John's College, Appleton went on to study under Sir J.J. Thompson and Lord Rutherford (also known as the guy Rutherfordium is named after).
Before he started his own groundbreaking work, though, he served in World War I in the West Riding Regiment. Oof. Once that whole "War to end all Wars" was over (soon followed by the term "War to end all Wars" no thanks to World War II), Appleton used radio waves to discover the ionosphere, which won him the Nobel Prize in 1924. He also figured out
- a mathematical method for localizing a target using radar.
- that skywaves (radio frequency waves pointed at the sky) reflect off of the ionosphere and the ground to produce multiple scattering effects (separation of the sound waves).
In doing all that, he figured out that the ionosphere is like a radar mirror. Its combination of ionized radiation and many layers that change with sunlight exposure give it that mirror-like quality.
Guess when people told him, "The sky's the limit," he took things literally.
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Sir Robert Watson-Watt
Born and Died: 1892 – 1973
Country: United Kingdom
Scientific Field(s): Engineering, Physics
Short Bio: When we said the invention of radar was tied to the two World Wars, we weren't kidding. Case in point: Robert Watson-Watt, who discovered radar to counter Adolf Hitler's claim that Germany had developed a death ray. Watt had a personality that was—for lack of a better understatement—called confrontational.
Back before his death-ray countering days, Watson-Watt was a meteorologist deeply interested in detecting lightning and thunder using radio frequency technology. His original work with the military involved locating thunderstorms to warn airmen in World War I. In fact, during this time he suggested that we could use radio for aircraft detection, but no one really took him seriously until Hitler's claim about death rays.
[Sigh]
Did we mention he had a confrontational personality? The man who invented radar was actually quoted for telling a policeman, "Had I known what you were going to do with it I would never have invented it!" The radar-wielding policeman pulled him over for speeding. In case you were wondering, yes, he did write a poem about it, and yes, you can read it online.
We won't give away the entire thing, but it makes an allusion to Frankenstein, which we think is pretty fitting.
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