Frederick Terman

Frederick Emmons Terman (1900 to 1982) was an American electrical engineer, educator and university administrator, remembered as one of the founding figures of Silicon Valley. Born in English, Indiana, he studied at Stanford University and took his doctorate in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Vannevar Bush. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1925, wrote the widely used 1932 textbook Radio Engineering, and encouraged his students David Packard and William Hewlett to found their own company. During the Second World War he directed the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory, which developed radar countermeasures. Back at Stanford he became dean of engineering and later provost, and he helped turn university land into the Stanford Research Park. He served as president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1941 and received its Medal of Honor in 1950.