Albert H. Taylor

Albert Hoyt Taylor (1879 to 1961) was an American physicist and radio engineer who led the United States Navy's early radio and radar research. Born in Chicago, he graduated from Northwestern University in 1902, taught at the University of Wisconsin, and earned a doctorate at Göttingen in 1909 with a thesis on aluminum rectifiers. As professor of physics and department head at the University of North Dakota until 1917 he built an experimental radio station and studied wave propagation and directive antennas. He then joined the Naval Reserve and in 1919 took charge of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory at Anacostia. In 1922 he and Leo Young observed radio waves reflected from ships on the Potomac, and his 1930 report on radio echo signals from moving objects spurred Navy work on radar, which produced a 200 MHz set ready for a ship by 1937. He headed the Radio Division of the Naval Research Laboratory until 1945. His honours include the Morris Liebmann Memorial Prize in 1927, the presidency of the IRE in 1929, the IRE Medal of Honor in 1942 and the Medal of Merit in 1944.