 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||
|
|
 Previous: A Fictional Character Comes to Life |  Next: The Big Project's Ranks, Enthusiasm Expand |
 O.G. "Mike" Villard, W6QYT, pioneered Amateur Radio SSB in the late 1940s. [Stanford University NewsPhoto] |
NEWINGTON, CT, Jan 27, 2004--Renowned RF engineer, Stanford University researcher and author Oswald Garrison "Mike" Villard Jr, W6QYT, of Palo Alto, California, died January 7. He was 87. A pioneer of Amateur Radio single sideband (SSB) and meteor-scatter techniques, Villard authored some two dozen QST articles between 1946 and 1994. They covered topics ranging from SSB, supermodulation, meteor detection and long-delayed echo (LDE) phenomena to VHF and microwave experimentation, antenna construction and fox hunting. He also was the author of more than 60 technical papers and held a half-dozen patents.
"His technical achievements were legendary," Dave Leeson, W6NL, a consulting professor of electrical engineering in Stanford`s Space, Telecommunications and Radioscience Laboratory (STARLab), told Stanford University News Service. "Stanford and the entire engineering community were enriched by his person and his accomplishments."
Born in Dobbs Ferry, New York, the son of O.G. Villard Sr, a noted publisher and editor (The New York Evening Post and The Nation), Mike Villard developed an interested in radio while still a youngster. He was first licensed as W1DMV in 1932, while living in Connecticut.
Since his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps, the younger Villard earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale in 1938, but then headed to Stanford University to pursue his first love, electrical engineering. While at Stanford, he studied under Professor Frederick Terman (ex-6FT and 6AE)--later regarded as the "father of Silicon Valley."
During World War II, Villard followed Terman to work at Harvard University's Radio Research Laboratory on enemy countermeasures research. He returned to Stanford after the war, joined the school's electrical engineering faculty in 1946 and completed his PhD in 1949. He taught and carried out research at Stanford for five decades, and he headed STARLab's predecessor--The RadioScience Laboratory--from 1958 until 1972.
While a student at Stanford, Villard found mentors in Russell and Sigurd Varian, David Packard and William Hewlett, William Webster Hansen and other luminaries. Villard later repaid the favor by aiding them as they developed the klystron--the basis of radar.
Among his Amateur Radio accomplishments, he experimented with and championed single-sideband, suppressed-carrier modulation in 1947, and the Stanford Amateur Radio Club's W6YX is said to have been the first ham station to use SSB transmission. While a student, he also served as the club's president, and from the 1950s through the early 1980s he was the trustee of W6YX. An ARRL member for many years, Villard was also a past scientific advisor to the Northern California DX Foundation.
During his career at Stanford (and later at Stanford Research Institute--SRI), Villard pioneered the concept and development of a program to design and build an over-the-horizon radar system to detect incoming military aircraft and high-altitude missiles. In addition, he demonstrated the feasibility of the "stealth aircraft" concept by using specially treated low-impedance surfaces.
Among his awards for contributions to the military were the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the Department of the Air Force and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
Another accomplishment was the design of a simple, small high-frequency receiving antenna that aided in nulling out signals that jammed broadcasts of the Voice of America, the BBC and others. Villard's design has remained in use around the world for several decades.
Villard was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the International Scientific Radio Union. He was a fellow of SRI, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Survivors include two sons and a daughter. His wife Bobbie died in 1996. A private graveside service will be held this spring in New York. Plans are pending for a West Coast memorial service.
The family requests donations in support of
the Mike Villard Memorial Fund to SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave,
AD-114, Menlo Park, CA 94025.--some information from Stanford News Service
| Previous: A Fictional Character Comes to Life | Next: The Big Project's Ranks, Enthusiasm Expand |
