Greenleaf Whittier Pickard

Greenleaf Whittier Pickard (1877-1956) was an American radio engineer born in Portland, Maine. He studied at Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School and took classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1899 a Smithsonian Institution grant supported his wireless research at the Blue Hill Observatory. He worked for American Telephone and Telegraph from 1902 to 1906, where he tested a very large number of minerals as radio-wave contact detectors and found that fused silicon gave excellent results, leading to his 1906 patent on a silicon crystal detector. In 1907 he and two associates founded the Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company to sell his detectors, including the Perikon. He later studied static and the effect of solar eclipses and meteor showers on radio propagation, served as the second president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1913, and received its Medal of Honor in 1926.