Harold (Hall) Chestnut (November 25, 1917 – August 29, 2001) was an American
electrical engineer
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
, control engineer and manager at
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
and author, who helped establish the fields of
control theory
Control theory is a field of mathematics that deals with the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive the system to a ...
and
systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...
.
Biography
Born in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York City ...
, where his father, educated as a
civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...
, worked in the family candy business. Chestnut was raised in the 1920s and went on a scholarship to
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
in 1934 to study
chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...
. In the first year he was awarded for his outstanding performance in chemistry, but switched anyway to electrical engineering and became
co-op student. After five years of study he received a combined
B.S.
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
and
M.S.
A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...
degree in
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
in 1940.
[Archives:Conversations with the Elders - Harold Chestnut](_blank)
at ieeeghn.org/wiki, 2012 Chestnut received further on-the-job training in General Electric's Advanced Engineering Program (AEP). Later in his career he received two honorary doctorates in engineering in 1966 from
Case Institute of Technology
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Res ...
in 1972 from
Villanova University
Villanova University is a Private university, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic research university in Villanova, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinians in 1842 and named after Thomas of Villanova, Sa ...
.
In 1940 Chestnut began a lifelong career with the
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
, which would last until his retirement in 1983. He married his wife Erma Ruth Callaway Chestnut in 1944 and they had three sons. During the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
Chestnut was both a student and an instructor in General Electric's well-known Advanced Engineering Program. He worked on the design of the central fire-control system and remotely controlled gun turrets used on the B-29 aircraft.
Later he worked in the Aeronautics and Ordnance Department and the Systems Engineering and Analysis branch of the Advanced Technology Laboratory, where he served as manager from 1956 to 1972. Here he worked on a wide variety of technical problems including reliability issues in rapid transit and the
Apollo mission to the
moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
.
[Stephen Kahne, ''Harold Chestnut, First IFAC President'', in: Automatica, June 2002, Volume 38, No. 6.] Later in his career he returned to the field of
electric power
Electric power is the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt, one joule per second. Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions o ...
. This time the focus was power systems automation.
From 1957 to 1959 he was the first president of the
International Federation of Automatic Control
The International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), founded in September 1957, is a multinational federation of 49 national member organizations (NMO), each one representing the engineering and scientific societies concerned with automatic c ...
(IFAC). After his term as president, he chaired the technical board from 1961 to 1966 and the
Systems Engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...
technical committee for another three years. He served as honorary editor from 1969 to 1972 and was the first adviser appointed for life in 1984. Chestnut was also involved in the
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
since its establishment in 1963 and served as president in 1973. He was active in the formation of the IEEE History Center and the International Federation of Automatic Control.
In 1961 Chestnut edited Automatica: The International Journal on Automatic Control and Automation. He also became editor of a John Wiley book series on
systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...
and analysis. In this series Chestnut published his own books.
In the 1980s and 1990s, after retirement, he created the "Supplemental Ways of Improving International Stability (SWIIS) Foundation" to identify and implement "supplemental ways to improve international stability". He devoted those years to this effort, in which he applied principles from the control field, such as stability and feedback, to international political realities.
Harold Chestnut received many awards: In 1966 he received an Honorary Doctorate in engineering from
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...
and in 1972 from
Villanova University
Villanova University is a Private university, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic research university in Villanova, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinians in 1842 and named after Thomas of Villanova, Sa ...
. In 1984 he won the
IEEE Centennial Medal
The IEEE Centennial Medal was a medal minted and awarded in 1984 ''to persons deserving of special recognition for extraordinary achievement'' to celebrate the Centennial of the founding of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (I ...
and in 1985 the
AACC's
Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award The Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award is an annual award (since 1979) given by the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) for achievements in control theory, named after the applied mathematician Richard E. Bellman. The award is given fo ...
. In 1981 he received the prestigious Honda Prize for ecotechnology, which included a substantial financial award from the Japan’s Honda Foundation.
Hondaprize 1980
. Dr. Harold Chestnut was awarded "For his achievements associated with the promotion of humanitarian use of technology as a world leader in systems engineering that encompasses electrical, electronic, instrumentation, and automatic control." He was also named a Fellow of the AIEE, ISA, and AAAS. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
in 1974 and selected as a Case Centennial Scholar in 1980.
In 1998 Harold Chestnut and the Chestnut Family provided a gift to IFAC for the IFAC Textbook Prize. The income from this donation funds the award for an outstanding textbook author recognized at each IFAC Congress.
Work
Harold Chestnut worked in the fields of Control system
A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat controlling a domestic boiler to large industrial c ...
, control theory
Control theory is a field of mathematics that deals with the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive the system to a ...
and systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...
.
Publications
Harold Chestnut published several articles and books, including:
* 1951.
Servomechanisms and Regulating Systems Design
'. Vol. 1, with R.W. Mayer, Wiley.
* 1955. ''Servomechanisms and Regulating Systems Design''. Vol. 2, with R.W. Mayer, Wiley.
* 1965. ''Systems Engineering Tools''. Wiley.
* 1967. ''Systems Engineering Methods''. Wiley.
Articles:
* 1970. "Information requirements for systems understanding". In: ''IEEE Trans. Syst. Sci. Cybern.''. Vol. SSC-6. pp. 3–12, Jan. 1970.
See also
*Automatic control
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
*Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...
References
Further reading
* Stephen Kahne (2002)
"Harold Chestnut, First IFAC President"
in ''Automatica'', June 2002, Volume 38, No. 6
* U. Luoto et al. (1978). "20 Years Old; 20 years Young", in ''AUTOMATICA'', Vol. 14, pp 49–75, 1978
*
In memoriam - Harold Chestnut (1918-2001)
', in: ''IEEE Control Systems Magazine'', Volume 22, Issue 2, Apr 2002 pp 87–87
"In memoriam—Harold Chestnut"
In: ''IEEE the current source'', Vol 28, no 1, April 2002
External links
IFAC
homepage
Harold Chestnut Control Engineering Textbook Prize
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chesnut, Harold
American electrical engineers
Control theorists
Systems engineers
Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award recipients
IEEE Centennial Medal laureates
MIT School of Engineering alumni
1917 births
2001 deaths
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
20th-century American engineers