Paul J. Nahin (born November 26, 1940 in

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...

) is an American electrical engineer and author who has written 20 books on topics in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, including biographies of

Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside FRS (; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vec ...

George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ire ...

, and

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American people, American mathematician, electrical engineering, electrical engineer, and cryptography, cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-o ...

, books on mathematical concepts such as

Euler's formula Euler's formula, named after Leonhard Euler, is a mathematical formula in complex analysis that establishes the fundamental relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function. Euler's formula states that for an ...

and the

imaginary unit The imaginary unit or unit imaginary number () is a solution to the quadratic equation x^2+1=0. Although there is no real number with this property, can be used to extend the real numbers to what are called complex numbers, using addition an ...

, and a number of books on the physics and philosophical puzzles of

time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

. Born in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, he graduated from

Brea Olinda High School Brea Olinda High School is a 9th–12th grade public high school located in Brea, California. Established in 1927, the school was originally located across the street from the Brea Mall. In 1989, the school moved to its current location on the ...

in 1958, and thereafter received a

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 ...

from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1962, an

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 ...

from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

in 1963, and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

in 1972, all 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 ...

.Electrical and computer engineering expert offers annual Sampson Lecture
''

Bates College Bates College () is a private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian Houses as some of the dormitories. It maintains of nature p ...

News'' (March 23, 2011). He thereafter taught at

Harvey Mudd College Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolls 902 undergraduate students ...

, the University of Virginia, and the

Naval Postgraduate School The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a public graduate school operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. It offers master’s and doctoral degrees in more than 70 fields of study to the U.S. Armed Forces, DOD ci ...

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...

. , Nahin was an emeritus professor of

at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

. Nahin received the 2017 Chandler Davis Prize for Excellence in Expository Writing in Mathematics and, in 1979, the first Harry Rowe Mimno writing award from the IEEE Areospace and Electronic Systems Society. He married Patricia A. Telepka in 1962.

Works

*
''Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons: From the Mathematics of Heat to the Development of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph''
(2020)
''Transients for Electrical Engineers: Elementary Switched-Circuit Analysis in the Time and Laplace Transform Domains (with a touch of MATLAB®)''
(2018)

(2018) * ttps://books.google.com/books/about/In_Praise_of_Simple_Physics.html?id=FNghCwAAQBAJ ''In Praise of Simple Physics: The Science and Mathematics behind Everyday Questions''(2016) * ''Inside Interesting Integrals'' (2014)
pbk edition

''Holy Sci-Fi!: Where Science Fiction and Religion Intersect''
(2014)
''Will You Be Alive in 10 Years?: And Numerous Other Curious Questions in Probability''
(2014) * ''The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age'' (2012)
2017 pbk edition

''When Least Is Best: How Mathematicians Discovered Many Clever Ways to Make Things as Small (or as Large) as Possible''
(2011);
''Number-Crunching: Taming Unruly Computational Problems from Mathematical Physics to Science Fiction''
(2011) * ''Dr. Euler's Fabulous Formula: Cures Many Mathematical Ills'' (2011
2017 pbk edition
* ''Digital dice: computational solutions to practical probability problems'' (2008)
2013 pbk edition
* ''Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel'' (1997)
2011 pbk edition

''Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt: And Other Intriguing Stories of Mathematical Physics''
(2009) * '' Chases and Escapes: The Mathematics of Pursuit and Evasion'' (2007; reprinted in paperback 2012)
''Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction''
(2001)

2nd Edition (2001) * ''Duelling Idiots and Other Probability Puzzlers'' (2000)
2012 pbk edition
* ''An Imaginary Tale: The Story of'' (1998) * ''Oliver Heaviside: Sage in Solitude : The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age'' (1988)

Jed Buchwald Jed Z. Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at Caltech. He was previously director of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and was elected to the American ...

(1991) ''

Centaurus Centaurus is a bright constellation in the southern sky. One of the 88 modern constellations by area, largest constellations, Centaurus was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one o ...

''. 2002 pbk edition

References

External links

Paul J. Nahin biography
at ''

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Nahin, Paul J. 1940 births Living people Engineers from California Mathematics popularizers Stanford University alumni California Institute of Technology alumni University of California, Irvine alumni American electrical engineers 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers