William Earle Bradley Jr. (January 7, 1913 – September 19, 2000) was an American engineer and businessman who was the first president of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

. He spent much of his career in research at Philco. He also spent 10 years doing government work and founded a water-purification business.

Personal life

Bradley was born January 7, 1913, in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. For 41 years he was married to Virginia Althea Meyer, also an employee of Philco. When he died on September 19, 2000, he was survived by two children. He was a member of Wrightstown Friends Meeting.

Career

Bradley earned a 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 ...

from the University of Pennsylvania in 1936, although the university counted him in the Class of 1935. He was a member of

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

and Sigma Xi. In June 1936 he joined Philco as a factory test engineer working on radio receivers. The next year he began working on wide-band amplifiers for television receivers, then in the experimental stage. During World War II he participated in Philco's collaboration with the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a collaboration that led to the invention of radar. He was promoted to assistant director of Philco's research division in 1945, director of the research division in 1946, and technical director in 1952. In addition to his research on television and radar, he also worked in

physical optics In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid. This usage tends not to include effec ...

solid-state physics Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the l ...

, and transistor manufacturing at Philco. In 1957 Bradley went on leave from Philco and spent the next 10 years doing scientific work for the federal government. He began on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Science Advisory Panel, chairing a subcommittee on

missile defense Missile defense is a system, weapon, or technology involved in the detection, tracking, interception, and also the destruction of attacking missiles. Conceived as a defense against nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), ...

as part of an arrangement with MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He later moved to the

Institute for Defense Analyses The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is an American non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) – the Systems and Analyses Center (SAC), the Science and Technology Policy Institute ...

. In 1970 Bradley moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he founded Puredesal Corp., which researched energy-efficient water purification. The business failed, and Bradley became a consultant. He was involved in work on Marambio Base in Antarctica.

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Bradley played a prominent role in the early life of the

(SIAM). He delivered the lecture at the third meeting of SIAM in May 1952, the first since the organization was incorporated. In October of that year Bradley became the organization's first president at the urging of Ed Block, who worked under him at Philco and who spearheaded SIAM's creation. Bradley resigned shortly after, however, citing conflicts with his other activities. In May 1953 he was replaced by Donald B. Houghton.

References

External links

Presidents of SIAM
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bradley, William E. Jr. 1913 births 2000 deaths American electrical engineers University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni American business executives Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics People from Lansdowne, Pennsylvania People from Bucks County, Pennsylvania 20th-century American businesspeople Engineers from Pennsylvania 20th-century American engineers