Louis N. Ridenour (June 27, 1911 – May 21, 1959) was a physicist instrumental in U.S. development of

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

, Vice President of Lockheed, and an advisor to President

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

Biography and positions held

During World War II, Ridenour worked at the

MIT Radiation Laboratory The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was a microwave and radar research laboratory located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was first created in October 1940 and operated until 31 ...

. He was co-leader with

Ivan A. Getting Ivan Alexander Getting (January 18, 1912 – October 11, 2003) was an American physicist and electrical engineer, credited (along with Roger L. Easton and Bradford Parkinson) with the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS). He was ...

of the group that developed the

SCR-584 The SCR-584 (short for '' Set, Complete, Radio # 584'') was an automatic-tracking microwave radar developed by the MIT Radiation Laboratory during World War II. It was one of the most advanced ground-based radars of its era, and became one of the ...

radar. He directed a committee in 1949 that recommended the establishment of a separate Research and Development Command and a new Air Staff Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development. In 1950, Ridenour was named the first

Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force The Chief Scientist of the Air Force is the most senior science & technology representative in the United States Department of the Air Force. The current Chief Scientist of the United States Air Force is Victoria Coleman, sworn in on April 6, 2021 ...

. He served on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the

Ballistic Research Laboratories The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) was a leading United States Army, U.S. Army research establishment situated at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland that specialized in ballistics (internal ballistics, interior, external ballistics, exterior, a ...

Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work at ...

. In 1941 he became the assistant director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory and helped transform primitive radar into a reliable defensive and offensive military tool. In 1946 Ridenour returned to the University of Pennsylvania for one year and then in 1947 he became dean of the Graduate College of the University of Illinois. During the next three years as dean, he was instrumental in establishing the Control Systems Laboratory, the Digital Computer Laboratory, and the Radio Carbon Laboratory, as well as a microbiology group and solid state group. He was Chairman of the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

Scientific Advisory Board Panel on Electronics and Data Processing from its inception January 27, 1959 until his death in May. In 1960 he was awarded posthumously the Theodore von Kármán Award from the

Air Force Association The Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit, professional military association for the United States Air Force and United States Space Force. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, its declared mission is " ...

. Ridenour was married to Gretchen Kraemer; they had two daughters, Nancy Page Buchanan (née Ridenour) and Eleanor Fay. Ridenour died of a brain hemorrhage on May 21, 1959 at age 47. His close associate

Dudley Allen Buck (Dr.) Dudley Allen Buck (1927–1959) was an electrical engineer and inventor of components for high-speed computing devices in the 1950s. He is best known for invention of the cryotron, a superconductive computer component that is operated in l ...

died the same day.

Major contributions

Ridenour led the development of airborne microwave radar nicknamed "Micky" which allowed bombing through clouds. Along with Gilbert W. King, Edwin L. Hughes, and George W. Brown, Ridenour patented an information storage system which combined optical disk storage of large capacity and a magnetic drum memory of low capacity. The write-once-read-many optical disk memory would be updated monthly, and recently changed data is held on the re-writable magnetic drum memory.

Patents

*2,473,175 Radio-Direction-Finding System *2,843,655 Subscription Television with Scrambled Transmission and Marquee and Barker *2,843,841 Information Storage System *2,875,269 Video Scrambling and Unscrambling System *2,918,522 Subscription Television Distribution System *2,972,008 Coding Methods and System

Publications

Author of Radar System Engineering, volume 1 of MIT Radiation Laboratory Series. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1947. Ridenour contributed to the ''

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists The ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'' is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. The ''Bulletin'' publishes conte ...

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridenour, Louis 1959 deaths 1911 births Chief Scientists of the United States Air Force University of Chicago alumni Radar pioneers Lockheed people 20th-century American physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society