Oral-History:Edward Altshuler

About Edward Altshuler

Edward E. Altshuler, an IEEE Life Fellow, received the B.S. degree in physics from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1953; the M.S. degree in physics from Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, in 1954; and the Ph.D. degree in applied physics from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1960. He became an IEEE Fellow in 1984, “for contributions to the understanding of tropospheric effects on millimeter wave propagation.

In 1960, Altshuler joined the Air Force Cambridge Research Labs (AFCRL), Hanscom AFB. Previously, he was employed by Arthur D. Little and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Sylvania Electric, Waltham, Massachusetts. He left AFCRL in 1961 to become Director of Engineering at Gabriel Electronics, Millis, Massachusetts, but returned to AFCRL in 1963 as Chief of the Propagation Branch from 1963 - 1982. He was also a Lecturer in the Northeastern University Graduate School of Engineering from 1964 - 1991.

Altshuler has been an active IEEE member and volunteer, serving as Chair of the IEEE Boston Section of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, 1965-1966, and a member of the Society’s Awards Committee; chair of the 1968 International IEEE AP S/ URSI Symposium in Boston; chair of the IEEE Boston Section Fellows and Awards Committee from 1993 – 1994; and chair of the IEEE Boston Section from 1995 – 1996. He also served on the IEEE Life Members Committee from 2001-2003 and was Chairman of the IEEE Boston Section Life Members Chapter from 1998-2010. His other professional activities include Associate Editor of Radio Science from 1976 -1978; member of Commissions B and F of the International Radio Scientific Union (URSI); member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board; Chairman of the NATO Research Study Group on Millimeter Wave Propagation and Target/Background Signatures from 1974 – 1993; and president of the Hanscom Chapter of Sigma Xi during 1989-1990.

Altshuler’s family endowed in his name, an award to the author of the best paper published in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, an endowment to the Northeastern University Physics Department, and an endowment to the Tufts University Physics Department.

About the Interview

EDWARD E. ALTSHULER: An Interview Conducted by Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center, September 8, 2022

Interview #883 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Copyright Statement

This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.

Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

EDWARD E. ALTSHULER, an oral history conducted in 2022 by Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Interview

INTERVIEWEE: Ed Altshuler

INTERVIEWER: Mary Ann Hellrigel

DATE: 8 September 2022

PLACE: Virtual

Early life and Education

Hellrigel:

[00:01:20] Today is September 8th, 2022. I am Mary Ann Hellrigel. I am the Institutional Historian and Archivist at IEEE History Center, and I’m honored to be talking to Dr. Edward E. Altshuler. [00:01:40] Altshuler.

Altshuler:

Altshuler, yes.

Hellrigel:

Altshuler, is an IEEE Life Fellow and an IEEE Fellow, class of 1984. You joined the AIEE or the IRE? [00:02:00]

Altshuler:

I think, I joined in 1954 when it was the IRE.

Hellrigel:

Yes, yes, because I--from reading your background and your APS work, Antenna and Propagation Society work and signal [00:02:20] processing, I thought you would be the IRE route. And we’ll get going. I welcome you. I’m recording the Life Fellows oral history for a special NIC (New Initiatives Committee)-funded project, and you’ve worked with my boss, Michael Geselowitz before, as you put together your memoir. [00:02:40] I welcome you, and I’m just thrilled to hear about your life story. I’ve read about it, but it’s always zippier to hear you in your own words, sir. And so, welcome. If you don’t mind, I would like you to mention, when and where you were [00:03:00] born.

Altshuler:

I was born in Boston on January 10th, 1931. I moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts around 1935; I was about four years old. [00:03:20] I basically was raised in Winthrop. Then when I got married, in 1958, I moved to Newton, Massachusetts, and I’ve been there ever since.

Hellrigel:

[00:03:40] You were a Massachusetts lad, and I understand your parents were Maurice and your mother’s name was Aida.

Altshuler:

Aida, yes.

Hellrigel:

What was her maiden name, if you don’t mind?

Altshuler:

Lavine. [00:04:00]

Hellrigel:

Maurice is your father?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

How many siblings did you have, sir?

Altshuler:

One sibling who was eight years older than me. His name was Sherman.

Hellrigel:

Now, if we can go back to your [00:04:20] mother and father, what were their levels of education and what did they do for a living?

Altshuler:

My father graduated high school and when I was pretty much born, he had a retail egg route. I don’t know whether you remember those [00:04:40] days where there was a milkman, a grocery man.

Hellrigel:

Yes.

Altshuler:

You’d get your milk. He’d go up to New Hampshire once a week and load up his truck with eggs and then put them in boxes and he would sell them [00:05:00] throughout the greater Boston area.

Hellrigel:

How did he get into that business?

Altshuler:

It was during the Great Depression. I think he was searching for anything that would support the family.

Hellrigel:

[00:05:20] Did he continue to run the egg route afterward?

Altshuler:

Yes, he did it until he retired. When I was probably around thirty-three. Let me see, probably around [00:05:40] 1964, 1965.

Hellrigel:

What did he think about the rise of the grocery stores and people buying their eggs elsewhere?

Altshuler:

Well, it eventually made its dent. In fact, when he was ready to retire, he had a [00:06:00] pretty good route, and I remember I called Hood’s Creamery because they also delivered eggs along with the milk, and they weren’t interested.

Hellrigel:

Oh.

Altshuler:

It pretty much took its toll, I think. [00:06:20] Once supermarkets came in, it was all over.

Hellrigel:

I’m getting a little off topic, but as a historian I have to ask. How was his egg route impacted by gas rationing during World War II? You would have been about twelve years old.

Altshuler:

That’s a very good point, because he [00:06:40] used to use a station wagon for his route, and with the gas rationing they considered that a pleasure vehicle, so he had to sell the station wagon and buy a truck in order to get gas.

Hellrigel:

Wow. That’s interesting. [00:07:00] Do you still enjoy eating eggs?

Altshuler:

[Laughter] I do. I’ll tell you, when I was growing, I had eggnog every morning, and then possibly eggs at another time during the day. Now I have very few eggs.

Hellrigel:

[00:07:20] I just thought I’d ask. Your mother Aida, did she graduate high school?

Altshuler:

I doubt it. My mother had, I think, a very sad history, because she never discussed what she did when she was [00:07:40] growing up. But when I looked at the 1900 census, I found out that she and her four siblings were in an orphanage [Troy Orphan Asylum] in Troy, New York.

Hellrigel:

Oh, boy.

Altshuler:

I don’t know how they got there. I never got [00:08:00] any information on it. It just came from the census. All I know is that my grandmother [Anna (Edelstein) Lavine] had a very hard life, and it wasn’t clear to me. When I tried to get information on my grandfather [00:08:20] I came up blank. I didn’t even know his name. I thought it was Sam Lavine, but I basically was never able to get any information on my mother’s upbringing. All I know is that [00:08:40] she was the oldest, although she never admitted it. And they all got married within a few years in the early 1920s.

Hellrigel:

How did she meet your dad? [00:09:00]

Altshuler:

Well, that’s a good question. I don’t know it exactly, but I believe that he was living in Revere, Massachusetts and she was living in Lynn, Massachusetts, which are next door to one another, so they probably met that way. [00:09:20] I’m really sad that I never got any information on their marriage. In fact, that was the reason I decided to write my autobiography so my children will know where I came from.

Hellrigel:

[00:09:40] It was not unusual if the head of household which was the man at the point, if he wasn’t there sometimes families temporarily put their children in homes, orphanages, because they didn’t have a support system like we have now. [00:10:00] Food stamps and things like that.

Altshuler:

I have it in 1900 census that she was in the orphanage. In the 1910 census, my grandmother and her five kids were living in Lynn, Massachusetts. [00:10:20] I think she was classified as a widow, so I assume her husband died, although there was always a question as to whether he died or left her with five kids.

Hellrigel:

That’s also not [00:10:40] uncommon to have listed someone as a widow when in reality the family had been abandoned. She did the best she could, and she moved then to Lynn. Then she has her children married off so maybe they got some stability. Your mom and dad then married in the [00:11:00] the 1920s.

Altshuler:

They married in 1922, and my brother was born in 1923. I was born eight years later in 1931.

Hellrigel:

So, two children. I [00:11:20] noticed from your memoir that you said you grew up with a large extended family since your mom was one of five and your dad was one of five. What was that like growing up in the suburbs of Boston?

Altshuler:

They were all local within commuting distance by automobile, [00:11:40] and my father was the fourth youngest of his siblings. And as I said, they were a closely knit family. They would [00:12:00] visit one another frequently. My mother’s family was not quite as close and didn’t visit quite as often, but they were on good terms. There, to my knowledge, was never any feuding among them, [00:12:20] and I had a lot of older cousins. I think my oldest cousin was born around 1908. I was the second youngest. I have one younger [00:12:40] cousin. Surprisingly, we have the same birthday. He was born one year later.

Hellrigel:

That’s amazing.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

I noticed too in your biographical material you sent me that your parents bought their first house in [00:13:00] 1937. What did that mean to the family?

Altshuler:

Actually, an aunt and uncle were already living in Winthrop, and I think they probably persuaded my father to look [00:13:20] around. We moved into a two-family house, and for a couple years we were there. Then they bought the house in Winthrop for $3,200. It was just amazing [00:13:40] for us. It was a three-bedroom home, and it was about maybe a couple of hundred yards from the ocean. I’d say my childhood was rather good. We did [00:14:00] get together a lot with my cousins. Hada cousins’ club. We all shared events together, weddings and other happy occasions.

Hellrigel:

Your mom was a stay-at-home [00:14:20] housewife, when you were growing up?

Altshuler:

Yes. I never knew whether she graduated high school, but I kind of doubt she did.

Hellrigel:

She might not have had the chance to. She probably had to work.

Altshuler:

She was the oldest of the five siblings, so she probably had [00:14:40] to help her mother.

Hellrigel:

Exactly. Your grandmother then, you knew her as you were growing up?

Altshuler:

She lived in Lynn, but when my aunt who was second oldest moved to Yonkers, [00:15:00] New York, my grandmother followed her there. She lived with my aunt until she died around 1950 or so.

Hellrigel:

That was also quite common that one of the children took in the parents.

Altshuler:

Oh, yes. [00:15:20] It was a different world.

Hellrigel:

I like to poke at people. When you were growing up, what was your favorite subject in school?

Altshuler:

I’d say they were science subjects like chemistry and physics, and math. [00:15:40]

Hellrigel:

How come?

Altshuler:

Pardon?

Hellrigel:

Why did you like them?

Altshuler:

I always had a curiosity as to how [00:16:00] things worked, and I guess I had more of an aptitude for those than I did for some of the other subjects. I was never good at languages.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

I guess I was also interested in [00:16:20] history.

Hellrigel:

So, were languages your least-favorite subject?

Altshuler:

Yes. I had French in high [00:16:40] school and German in college. I passed the French [for my master’s degree]. I took the German exam three times before I passed it. [I needed French and German for my doctorate.]

Hellrigel:

Yes. [00:17:00] No linguist. What about hobbies and other interests? What did you do growing up?

Altshuler:

There weren’t that many technical things. Of course, there was no television, computers, anything close to what we have now. [00:17:20] There was radio, and I enjoyed that, and phonographs, movies. But most of my spare time, I think, was spent with sports.

Hellrigel:

Oh, what [00:17:40] sports?

Altshuler:

We played basketball, football [and] baseball. Never did much hockey because there weren’t any hockey rinks around. You had to wait for the lake to freeze and that didn’t always happen.

Hellrigel:

[00:18:00] Did you play sports in school?

Altshuler:

Yes, it was mostly sandlot.

Hellrigel:

Since you were close to Revere, did you go hang out at the beach and go to the amusement rides?

Altshuler:

[00:18:20] They used to have what they call Nickel Day. We’d walk from Winthrop to Revere, and then all the rides were very inexpensive. I didn’t go that often. [00:18:40]

Hellrigel:

Did your family go on vacations and Sunday picnics?

Altshuler:

[Not really. My dad had the obligation of delivering eggs to his customers fifty-two weeks per year. We couldn’t do anything too fancy. I had the beach near my house, and I had my friends. I did not miss it.]

Approximately 6 minutes of material, [00:18:50] to [00:24:50], has been redacted.

Hellrigel:

Your biographical material said they decided that they wanted you to go to college.

Altshuler:

Yes, they did. There was the obstacle of tuition, as I may have mentioned, [but they wanted me to go to college.]

Hellrigel:

Yes, sir.

Altshuler:

[00:25:00] They really didn’t have the money, but my mother’s sister [Mae] had married a reasonably wealthy New Yorker, and my mother asked if she could pay my first-year tuition, [00:25:20] $400. Which she did.

Hellrigel:

Why did you decide on Northeastern University?

Altshuler:

I think it was mostly because there was a co-op there.

Hellrigel:

The co-op program that you worked in during the summer, or did you work during the school year, too?

Altshuler:

[00:25:40] There were basically four quarters, and the first quarter you would take classes, the second quarter you would work, the third [00:26:00] quarter you’d take classes, and the fourth quarter you would work, and during the summer there was a maybe six-week term where you’d take classes, and the other part of the summer you would work.

Hellrigel:

You were a commuter? [00:26:20] You lived at home?

Altshuler:

In my day if you could commute, you commuted. There was no option to live at school.

Hellrigel:

Did you take the transit, or did you get a car?

Altshuler:

I started out [00:26:40] taking the MTA. I would take a bus from Winthrop to Orient Heights in East Boston, then I’d get on a train and get to Huntington Ave in--

Hellrigel:

Downtown.

Altshuler:

[00:27:00] I did that for probably a couple years, and then I bought my first car for $35.

Hellrigel:

What did you buy, sir?

Altshuler:

A 1937 Plymouth. It had over 100,000 miles on it. [00:27:20] It was really a piece of junk, but it got me back and forth.

Hellrigel:

Were you able to maintain it yourself?

Altshuler:

Yes. I always, for the most part, maintained all my cars. It wasn’t until they [00:27:40] got a computer in your car that I couldn’t do much more.

Hellrigel:

How did you learn how to do that? Did your dad teach you?

Altshuler:

No. Probably my brother was quite handy, but I just managed to figure it out. As I say, I was [00:28:00] never afraid of trying new things.

Northeastern

Hellrigel:

Northeastern attracts you because of the co-op plan. Why physics?

Altshuler:

That’s an interesting [00:28:20] question. I should say I applied to electrical engineering, and at that time there were a lot of veterans going there, and they said that was filled up. But they could accept me [00:28:40] for the Physics Department, which I accepted.

Hellrigel:

Did you enjoy the major?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

You were accepted into physics. Were the students mostly gentlemen? Did you have any women in your classes? [00:29:00]

Altshuler:

Not that I remember. I think there may have been a handful of women at Northeastern in the whole school.

Hellrigel:

One other question. When you were growing up did you have any part-time jobs [00:29:20] when you were a youngster?

Altshuler:

When I was a real youngster, I used to caddy at the golf course; that was when I was a teen. I got my first job when I was sixteen working for the [00:29:40] theater. They had two theaters in Winthrop, and they both showed double features. There were always two movies, and each movie had four reels. [00:30:00] My job was [ferrying the film between theaters.] They had a Jeep, and I would drive back and forth from the movies with the correct reels. So, while one movie was showing one picture, the other one [00:30:20] would be showing the other.

Hellrigel:

Okay, so they shared the film.

Altshuler:

Yes, they paid for one set of films instead of two. My salary was 60 cents an hour, and I worked nine hours a week. [00:30:20]

Hellrigel:

And you got to see every movie first?

Altshuler:

I had my fill of movies.

Hellrigel:

What were some of your favorite genres? Westerns?

Altshuler:

Probably Westerns. In those days there [00:31:00] were probably Westerns, comedies, I’m sure there was some drama. But whatever it was, it was, I had to sit there and wait.

Hellrigel:

Why did you select that job? You probably could’ve --

Altshuler:

It was a [00:31:20] chance to make some money.

Hellrigel:

Were there any repair shops that you might have worked in? For example, a couple of gentlemen I’ve talked to recently worked at radio repair shops, things of that nature.

Altshuler:

I’m not even sure they had them at the time in Winthrop. [00:31:40] There was no television. No computers. One of my friends, I know his father as a sideline used to repair radios. But I don’t think they had any [00:32:00] large shops for doing that.

Hellrigel:

As you’re growing up what kind of technology did you have at home? Much of my research is focused on the ate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The U.S. Census had questions such as do you have indoor plumbing, electric lighting, radio, a refrigerator and later, a television? [00:32:20]

Altshuler:

We had radio; telephone, a shared line; and we had a refrigerator.

Hellrigel:

Party line. And indoor plumbing?

Altshuler:

Yes, and [00:32:40] no washing machine. I remember my mother used to bag our laundry, and they did what they call the wet wash.

Hellrigel:

Oh, yes.

Altshuler:

The guy would pick it up, bring it back all laundered, but not dried.

Hellrigel:

And she’d put it on the line.

Altshuler:

[00:33:00] Yes.

Hellrigel:

This might be a dopey question. What did she do in the winter? Dry it around the house, I guess?

Altshuler:

There was no dryer.

Hellrigel:

No, but maybe hang it on the clothesline?

Altshuler:

Hang it on the line outside. It eventually dried.

Hellrigel:

My mom would bring in the [00:33:20] pants and sometimes they would be frozen.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Then we’d put it on the radiator.

Altshuler:

I know that we didn’t have any serious problem with the routine we used.

Hellrigel:

You’re growing up, and you [00:33:40] decided that you are going to go to college. Your aunt and her husband helped you out with tuition, so I guess you got along with that aunt and uncle fairly well?

Altshuler:

Yes. I was probably my aunt’s [00:34:00] favorite nephew, because actually, surprisingly, when she passed away, she left her part of the estate to me. None for my brother or my other cousins, but what I did do is I did share a part of it [00:34:20] with them.

Hellrigel:

She was able to do this because she did not have children.

Altshuler:

I think, as I’ve been told, she had one child who died at childbirth.

Hellrigel:

Passed away. Okay.

Now that you’re in college you are taking classes, but what did you do [00:34:40] for fun?

Altshuler:

[Laughter] Too much. I got in a fraternity. We didn’t have a house, but we had a group of close-knit guys. We used to have a lot of social events. Actually, [00:35:00] in my last year I was the chancellor of our fraternity. But I made lifelong friends.

Hellrigel:

What was the name of this fraternity?

Altshuler:

It was the local fraternity Kappa Zeta Phi.

Hellrigel:

Kappa Zeta Phi.

Altshuler:

It’s not a national [00:35:20] fraternity.

Hellrigel:

Okay. And as chair you were in charge of the kegs?

Altshuler:

Yes, I was.

Hellrigel:

I’m kidding.

Altshuler:

It’s a social experiment, as I said, the chancellor. We’d have a meeting [00:35:40] once a week at the university. They would give us a room for the evening. It was a very, I think, all-in-all rewarding experience.

Hellrigel:

Your autobiography [00:36:00] mentions that you were able through your own wit to find a co-op job.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Sophomore year?

Altshuler:

Sophomore year it came up dry. They had a man who would basically be [00:36:20] responsible for finding jobs for the co-op students. His concentration was engineers and scientists. The first year I got a couple of jobs. One was driving [00:36:40] a truck for a dry-cleaning company [Lechtur Cleaners]. I delivered the clothes. Another job was driving a truck for a package grocery store, and I would fill the orders. [00:37:00] It brought in some money, that’s all--

Hellrigel:

Well, and at that point you’re competing with all the EEs and others. Some of the students on the GI bill may have had families at this point. Anyway, it was very competitive, I imagine, trying to find [00:37:20] something.

Altshuler:

I’m sorry. What was that again?

Hellrigel:

At the time you’re a single person and you’re competing with many people who are on the GI Bill who maybe had families at the time, and so there probably were extenuating challenges.

Altshuler:

Yes. Actually, I started [00:37:40] at Northeastern in 1948. I would guess that probably about half of the students were veterans.

Hellrigel:

Yes. Finally, your junior year they were [00:38:00] able to find you the job with was it Conversions and Surveys?

Altshuler:

That was actually my third year. There were five years.

Hellrigel:

Oh, five years; that’s right.

Altshuler:

Yes. The first year you went full time, and the remaining four years you went part time. [00:38:20] So, in my third year they found this job for a group of us. There was a company that was coming into Massachusetts to convert all the gas appliances from what was coal gas, which had, like, [00:38:40] 600 BTU rating, to natural gas which was like 1040. So, every stove, for every burner there was a little orifice, and they had to be removed and made smaller in order for it to accommodate the [00:39:00] new natural gas.

Hellrigel:

You retrofitted the stoves?

Altshuler:

All gas appliances. We had three days of orientation and then we were considered able to do it.

Hellrigel:

[00:39:20] Do you remember the appliances? Okay, you had the stove, you probably had a water heater.

Altshuler:

A stove, water heater. What else was there?

Hellrigel:

I did some work on coal gas, but at this point if the place already had electricity, they wouldn’t have had the coal [00:39:40] gas irons. They used to have rubber hosing that connected to the back of the stove.

Altshuler:

Well, I think I could say that any appliance that had a burner, a gas burner, had to be converted.

Hellrigel:

Okay. They have water heaters also; [00:40:00] they had those. Did you like this job?

Altshuler:

Well, I liked the money. We worked a minimum of 60 hours a week, and a number of times after a ten-hour shift we’d go into a [00:40:20] night shift and work another six hours. I got a base pay of $1.10 an hour, but then I got time and a half for overtime. It was [00:40:40] certainly a lot more money than I was making at my previous jobs.

Hellrigel:

Well, yes. The overtime rate, at a $1.65 an hour, was nearly three times what you made at the movie house.

Altshuler:

[Laughter] Yes.

Hellrigel:

I guess the quarters are ten weeks, so you work ten weeks like a maniac [00:41:00] for sixty hours, and then you went back to the classroom?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Did you go then back to this company?

Altshuler:

You know, I was trying to remember whether I went to them or whether I went somewhere else. But I will say that the following [00:41:20] year, junior year, that’s when I got what I considered a real job where I got training in physics, or exposure. The way it was, I worked for this Inorganic Chemistry [00:41:40] Department [at MIT], and they had a lot of electronic equipment. There was maybe a half-dozen graduate students, and I would basically help them with anything that they needed. It was very good [00:42:00] exposure for me.

Hellrigel:

Did MIT run out of people if they were hiring from Northeastern? That might be a stupid question.

Altshuler:

I don’t know the details; all I know is [00:42:20] that there was one other fellow in a different division. I was like in fall, he was maybe winter. When I left, he would join them, so they always had someone [00:42:40] as a co-op student.

Hellrigel:

This was a job you returned to after you were a co-op at the MIT inorganic chemistry department. Then back to classes and then back to MIT?

Altshuler:

Yes. I did that for a full year.

Hellrigel:

[00:43:00] You must have liked it, to go back and not want to move onto something else.

Altshuler:

It was really a great collection of classes and graduate students.

Hellrigel:

What kind of research were they [00:43:20] doing? You said electronics technician. -

Altshuler:

We were actually working mostly, I’d say, in radioactivity.

Hellrigel:

Wow.

Altshuler:

I say, they were very down to earth. I [00:43:40] remember the first time I saw the supervisor. I said, I called him Professor Coryell, and he says, call me Charlie. [Laughter] [00:44:00] He was rather famous.

Hellrigel:

Yes, he sounds familiar.

Altshuler:

Well, he was strictly a chemist.

Hellrigel:

You worked for him, and the graduate [00:44:20] students treated you nicely. You said in your autobiography that that’s where you had the exposure to graduate students, and you thought maybe you could join that group. You could become a graduate student yourself.

Altshuler:

Yes, I think I had very little knowledge [00:44:40] of graduate education. I clearly didn’t know much about it, and it wasn’t until I got to MIT that I felt that it was really a good idea, and I’d speak with them, and they would encourage me [00:45:00] to think about it.

Hellrigel:

And at this point they’re inorganic chemistry, but there’s enough overlap with physics.

Altshuler:

It was mostly electronic equipment.

Hellrigel:

Okay. How were your classes going at this point?

Altshuler:

At [00:45:20] Northeastern?

Hellrigel:

Yes, sir.

Altshuler:

My first few years, I really didn’t work as hard as I should have, but my junior and senior years I really applied myself, [00:45:40] and I got much better grades.

Hellrigel:

Why the change?

Altshuler:

I guess I matured. [Laughter]

Hellrigel:

Maybe you were thinking graduate school?

Altshuler:

I’m not sure. but I just realized that I should [00:46:00] buckle down and do better than I was.

Hellrigel:

At this point, are your parents keeping tabs on you, making sure you’re progressing, or are they--

Altshuler:

No.

Hellrigel:

Just--no?

Altshuler:

I lived at home. I’d go into my room, and I’d study, but obviously they [00:46:20] had no real understanding of math or physics, so I was pretty much on my own.

Hellrigel:

You said a few of your cousins went to college. Did they also major in science, engineering?

Altshuler:

No. I think to the [00:46:40] best of my knowledge, one of them majored in engineering. I think the others were probably business, but I wasn’t really that close to them when I was at Northeastern. One of them [00:47:00] went to Cornell, and another one I guess went to BU (Boston University), but he was a bit older than me, and we didn’t really communicate much.

Hellrigel:

Did you have any professors at Northeastern that influenced [00:47:20] you?

Altshuler:

To a degree. Not as much-that I really thought that they did affect my future.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

[00:47:40] I had a couple of good physics professors, and I had some good math professors. But no one who had what I consider a serious impact [00:48:00] on my future education.

Hellrigel:

And were your classes small? Twenty? Thirty?

Altshuler:

Yes, relatively small. Most of the math and physics majors would share [00:48:20] the same class. I’d say the average was probably about twenty.

Hellrigel:

At any time did you think of jumping ship and going to the EE department?

Altshuler:

[00:48:40] Not really. I was very content with the Physics Department. The only thing that we didn’t have which the electrical engineers had was mechanical drawing.

Hellrigel:

[00:49:00] Okay, drafting.

Altshuler:

But we had liberal arts, philosophy, astronomy, what else?

Hellrigel:

What they would call the GE (general education) classes these days.

Altshuler:

In retrospect, I think it [00:49:20] probably was best that I did that, rather than electrical engineering, but either way I probably would’ve wound up the same way.

Hellrigel:

When you were in high school did you have any shop classes?

Altshuler:

Yes. There was one where you’d [00:49:40] make some sort of a wood-working.

Hellrigel:

Oh, woodwork?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

When I was growing up, the junior high school had a wood shop, metal shop, and drafting. I was the first girl in my town to take wood shop, and it was 7th [00:50:00] grade. I made a bookcase. I still have it. The high school had more shop classes, and I took one year of mechanical drawing.

Altshuler:

That was the only thing that was really offered. No metal work, to my knowledge.

Hellrigel:

[00:50:20] I understand that the job you had the Arthur D. Little lab was, I don’t know, perhaps the most encouraging. Is this the most advanced lab that you’re going to work at, at this point? Little was a [00:50:40] paramount company at that point.

Altshuler:

Yes, they had an excellent reputation. Actually, we started at a building in Kendall Square, [Cambridge].

Hellrigel:

Oh, okay.

Altshuler:

You may know Kendall Square now as the center of high tech.

Hellrigel:

Yes.

Altshuler:

[00:51:00] I worked with a group of engineers, and we had some very interesting projects that I helped [00:51:20] with.

Hellrigel:

What type of projects were you working on? Do you recall?

Altshuler:

What I remember was that they had a project--how airplanes come in on an aircraft carrier. They have [00:51:40] to come down and then they have to grab the airplane.

Hellrigel:

The tailhook. Yes, the hook system.

Altshuler:

One of the projects was coming up with a system for doing that.

Hellrigel:

Oh. A mechanical system that would hook it before it could slide off the end and run over people.

Altshuler:

[00:52:00] Yes. [Laughter]

Hellrigel:

So, that’s mechanical. That’s not much signal processing. You have to figure out I guess how to shoot the hook out, or throw the hook out like a fish?

Altshuler:

Well, all I know is that I think they [00:52:20] had some very capable engineers, and they had a number of good projects. I remember one of them involved using loafs of bread.

Hellrigel:

Loaves of bread?

Altshuler:

Loaves of bread. [00:52:40] When the project was done or while were going on, they let the employees take a loaf of bread home.

Hellrigel:

So, they would, shoot a loaf of bread and you had to catch it with a mechanism?

Altshuler:

[Laughter] I don’t remember the details.

Hellrigel:

Well, [00:53:00] that was a perk. You never have to worry about sandwiches. You always had a backup. The Naval yard was there, and I don’t know if you ever did any work at, at the Naval yard. Boston had the Naval yard.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Did you do [00:53:20] any work with Little that contracted with any of the other projects?

Altshuler:

I remember we did some work with Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey.

Hellrigel:

Yes, sir; that’s up the road.

Altshuler:

I remember that was probably one of the first [00:53:40] trips that I took for my work-related job. I went with a senior engineer, and we went down to New Jersey, and got a hotel room. This was a new experience for me.

Hellrigel:

At that point, [around Picatinny Arsenal], that was still the woods. [00:54:00] A lot was built up there after the 1970s, but that was still in the middle of nowhere. It’s still there, but it is downsized a bit.

Altshuler:

I would say we went there in 1952, 1953, when I was in my [00:54:20] last year at Northeastern. I graduated in 1953.

Hellrigel:

They even have a golf course. [Laughter] Now you’re working. What did you expect to do with a physics degree?

Altshuler:

There really wasn’t [00:54:40] much available. In fact, people say, what are you going to do with a physics degree? [Laughter]

Hellrigel:

Some people still ask that.

Tufts, Harvard

Altshuler:

Yes. There was not much going on. [00:55:00] It was before the transistor and the laser and all those things. At Little, a couple of the workers encouraged me to [00:55:20] apply to graduate school. I applied to several and I got accepted at Tufts [College], which was considered to be a good college at the time. They had the advantage of being local, so I [00:55:40] could drive to school.

Hellrigel:

Right. You planned to do this full time, but you had mentioned that they offered you a teaching fellowship, and that slowed you down a bit.

Altshuler:

It didn’t slow me down quite as much. [00:56:00] I think if I had gone full time I probably may have gotten out in June.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

But, going part-time I didn’t get out, as you probably learned, until the fall.

Hellrigel:

And that was the fall [00:56:20] of 1954?

Altshuler:

The good thing was I got free tuition, which was over $2,000 a year, and at that time was a lot of money.

Hellrigel:

Oh, yes. That is a year’s salary at a number of jobs, especially working-class jobs.

Altshuler:

Yes, in fact I think one of the professors was only getting paid a few [00:56:40] thousand dollars a year.

Hellrigel:

What did you teach?

Altshuler:

Actually, it was mostly a physics lab. The physics students and even students in other curricula, had to take [00:57:00] a course in physics. So, we had a number of lab experiments that I would set up and kind of supervise.

Hellrigel:

Did you like this type of work?

Altshuler:

Yes, very much.

Hellrigel:

Did you ever have the opportunity to [00:57:20] give lectures?

Altshuler:

Well, not like, I guess, a lot of teaching fellows. The department was quite small, and [00:57:40] the professor pretty much handled all of that. He never asked us to correct papers or do anything like that.

Hellrigel:

You’re there, and at this point what’s your game plan? Are you going to stay on? Well, Tufts doesn’t have the [00:58:00] Ph.D., but did you have that in your vision?

Altshuler:

Well, yes. Then at that time I had a cousin by marriage I may have mentioned; his name was Leonard Sheingold. He graduated [00:58:20] Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. When I was at Tufts, he kind of helped me prepare a letter [00:58:40] to apply to that division, and I was pleasantly surprised when I got accepted.

Hellrigel:

Your cousin Leonard Sheingold, he had received his Ph.D.?

Altshuler:

From Harvard. [00:59:00] He had a reasonably high-level position at Sylvania Electric. He hired a lot of Harvard Ph.D. graduates

Hellrigel:

You were [00:59:20] close to this cousin and he started to guide you?

Altshuler:

Yes. He lived close by, and I would prepare a letter and he would go over it and edit it. So, yes, I’d say he was very helpful in my getting into Harvard. [00:59:40]

Hellrigel:

At this point, what did you do when you got that letter from Harvard that said “welcome”?

Altshuler:

I was very pleased, but I remember I showed it to my advisor at Tufts and he says, “what [01:00:00] makes you think you will finish in time?” I said, “well, I’m going to make a real effort to do it.” And, as I mentioned, I had obstacles where two hurricanes pretty much wiped me out for over a week, and I couldn’t [01:00:20] do anything. I even took the headlights off my car with the battery, brought them into my room hoping that would work out, but it turns out that automobile headlights are very blotchy, and it really didn’t work out very well.

Hellrigel:

[01:00:40] So, at this point you’re trying to type up and write your thesis?

Altshuler:

Yes, I was doing my own typing.

Hellrigel:

Okay. And you don’t have any light. It’s a manual typewriter, but you’re running out of time.

Altshuler:

- - but I guess three carbons.

Hellrigel:

Okay. [01:01:00] I used to use the old ribbon manual typewriter. I used a red and a black ribbon on my portable typewriter. You had a double ribbon so if you wanted to highlight something in red you had to do something and--

Altshuler:

That was a nightmare.

Hellrigel:

[01:01:20] Yes.

Altshuler:

I did manage to get through it, but my main problem was I started Harvard before I finished the thesis, and I didn’t want to drag it out. I was [01:01:40] getting close to the end. In retrospect, I probably would’ve been better off if I started Harvard later on, but I was always optimistic that if I worked hard enough, I could succeed. [01:01:40]

Hellrigel:

Well, and at that point, too, you don’t know if you ask for a delay if it might mean you’ll lose your spot.

Altshuler:

Yes. I don’t know. I remember, I tried to go to most of the classes, but I couldn’t make them [01:02:20] all. I mentioned I had gotten through Tufts with eight half courses, three qualifying exams, a language exam, and a thesis [01:02:40] in one calendar year. I said, well, I can probably handle it. But it was hopeless. There were students who were very bright and a lot of them were foreign [01:03:00] and they would study day and night. And as I mentioned, by Thanksgiving I realized I had to toss in the towel.

Hellrigel:

At Harvard you’re on fellowship and free tuition, but you’re a teaching assistant? Or what was going on?

Altshuler:

[01:03:20] Well, that was pretty much it.

Hellrigel:

Your days are busy tending labs and trying to get your classes in, plus trying to figure out how to finish your thesis.

Altshuler:

Yes, I actually got through my coursework reasonably well at Tufts. I got [01:03:40] excellent grades. I got almost all A’s. My thesis was going rather well. I had to build my own equipment, but under normal circumstances I probably could have [01:04:00] finished in time to start Harvard.

Hellrigel:

What’s your thesis on? What was your research at Tufts?

Altshuler:

At the time they had just invented what they call a [01:04:20] microstrip, or strip transmission lines. What it was if you take a coaxial line and you flatten it out, then the outer conductor becomes two plane [01:04:40] conductors, and the inner conductor becomes the center line. So, it’s basically a transmission line.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

At the time, my professor thought it might be a good idea to [01:05:00] study what they call step discontinuities in this transmission line.

Hellrigel:

So, that would be interferences?

Altshuler:

Yes, where you change the, say, the center conductor, and you would go from a [01:05:20] small width to a larger width. I made impedance measurements of different width-discontinuities and at several frequencies.

Hellrigel:

So, [01:05:40] at this point, I’m just looking at the three fields you study, I guess, you’ve got mechanics and heat, but properties of metals must have been pretty important. What was your conduit?

Altshuler:

Oh, it was all copper.

Hellrigel:

[01:06:00] Copper.

Altshuler:

Yes, so it was actually copper etched on dielectric board.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

The way I would do it is etch away, all but the [01:06:20] center conductor. So, you came up with a base that was a composite with a copper conductor on it. Then I had two ground [01:06:40] planes that were about maybe a few inches by six or eight inches. I would support the center conductor in between those. And I would use the slotted line to make my impedance measurements.

Hellrigel:

At [01:07:00] this point, are you looking at this product potentially going to be commercialized for like the telephone company or what? What’s the game plan?

Altshuler:

Well, actually, the interesting thing is that this is being supported by the [Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, AFCRL] where I’d eventually work [01:07:20] It was strictly research, and ideally it would’ve been used by the military, by the Air Force.

Hellrigel:

Yes, you had mentioned the Air Force supported your master’s and your Ph.D. work. Did [01:07:40] your professors subcontract with them?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

When you are working on that project, did your professor pick you and put you in a project, or did you get to choose?

Altshuler:

I didn’t really have much of a choice. I think that he was the one [01:08:00] that suggested it. I had no knowledge of strip lines.

Hellrigel:

And, at this point did you join IRE as a student?

Altshuler:

No, actually, I didn’t join [01:08:20] IRE until I became a student at Harvard. I remember one of the professors that I had a class with came around with applications to join the IRE, and I filled one out and that was [01:08:40] the beginning.

Hellrigel:

Had you heard about IRE beforehand?

Altshuler:

Yes. I didn’t know that much about it. See, in Tufts I was in the Physics Department, and I don’t think there were that many students or even professors [01:09:00] that may have been IEEE--IRE members.

Hellrigel:

Right, so you probably didn’t read their journals.

Altshuler:

No, the only things that I got involved with were the honors societies, Sigma Psi, and Sigma Pi Sigma. They were physics [01:09:20] honors societies.

Hellrigel:

That’s Sigma Pi Sigma and Sigma Psi?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Okay. Now jumping to Harvard, you’re starting to become more of a bridge [01:09:40] between a technologist and a theoretical physicist? I don’t know if this is an accurate statement.

Altshuler:

No, at that time it was strictly theory and experiment, no simulation. Usually, you did both. You would work on a [01:10:00] theory, and then my professor felt that theory alone was not sufficient, you had to prove it experimentally.

Hellrigel:

Right. I’ve done a number of interviews with the members of the IEEE Council on Superconductivity. I have interviewed [01:10:20] mostly gentlemen. They said that the world breaks down into usually people who are good with the pencil versus those who are good with their hands. You had to do both in your world?

Altshuler:

Yes, pretty much. You did [01:10:40] enough theory to enable you to pursue and experiment to prove it.

Hellrigel:

When your folks heard that you got into Harvard, they must have done a happy dance; their boy is at Harvard.

Altshuler:

[Laughter] They were happy campers [01:11:00] when I graduated Northeastern and graduated at Tufts. When I withdrew from Harvard, I really felt I disappointed a lot of people, but I just couldn’t handle it.

Hellrigel:

You said you had been [01:11:20] also working pretty hard for six years, so maybe you needed a break.

Altshuler:

I think so. I think that even though I did have the advantage of co-op student where I get a break from [01:11:40] studies it still had the pressure of pretty much fulfilling all your academic requirements.

Hellrigel:

And also working full time, it’s not like you got to either take a semester off or go on [01:12:00] spring break. So, you’re always driving. Initially you go to Harvard that first semester. What did you intend to do? Did you see your life as a teaching academic, a lab person?

Altshuler:

Well, I guess my principal [01:12:20] objective was just trying to finish my doctorate program.

Sylvania Electric

Hellrigel:

Okay. Now, you’re going to take a break, and this is where you wind up at Sylvania Electric?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

You point out that [01:12:40] you’re going to work at the Microwaves & Antenna Department, and you started at a pretty good salary, I would think. But you’re probably heartbroken. How did you pick yourself back up?

Altshuler:

[01:13:00] I was obviously disappointed that I had to withdraw. Professor King [Ronald W.P. King] really made an effort to try and keep me there, and I just couldn’t handle it. So, at that time a [01:13:20] salary of $5,000 with a master’s degree was reasonable.

Hellrigel:

And you get to stay in the area.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Did you ever think of leaving the area?

Altshuler:

Not really. I felt as long as [01:13:40] I had an opportunity to stay in Boston I would remain there. I suppose--oh, part of it, I didn’t really see any other opportunities that weren’t in Boston. In fact, most of the Northeastern co-op students all worked [01:14:00] locally. It isn’t like it is today; they work all over the world.

Hellrigel:

Right, but at that point it was Route 128, that big high area. It was the Silicon Valley of America at that point. I mean, you had so much opportunity in Boston area.

Altshuler:

[01:14:20] Yes. I mean, it was really that I didn’t feel there was any reason for me to leave Boston. I didn’t have, to the best of my knowledge, any other options.

Hellrigel:

You’re working and you had been in the fraternity at Northeastern. Did [01:14:40] you get to play sports or do things like that anymore?

Altshuler:

Mostly intramural. In college I was really too busy to partake in sports. [01:15:00] I was never good enough to get on the teams.

Liberfarb:

But he used to play poker for fun.

Hellrigel:

Oh, just for fun?

Altshuler:

My wife, Ruth Liberfarb.

Hellrigel:

Hello.

Altshuler:

That was something I was going to get to. [01:15:20]

Hellrigel:

As you smile.

Altshuler:

Our fraternity played penny ante poker on the weekends. When we left Northeastern, we were at a [01:15:40] fraternity reunion probably, oh, ten years later, and we said, maybe we should start playing poker again. We picked that up, and we played until our last game was about maybe two [01:16:00] years ago. We probably could be in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest floating poker game in the world.

Hellrigel:

I just watched the Danny DeVito movie, Even Money, about figuring out the house in Law Vegas. You and your frat brothers could go down to Mohegan Sun casino [01:16:20] to figure out the house. [Laughter]

Altshuler:

Yes, we had at Northeastern a good social program. We had a lot of parties, and a lot of good times together.

Hellrigel:

You [01:16:40] said they became lifelong friends, so that’s important.

Altshuler:

Yes, it is. We still get together. Of course, we’ve lost several of them, but there are now about half-a-dozen of us that go out socially with our [01:17:00] wives. I guess, the pandemic put a damper on things.

Hellrigel:

Oh, yes.

Altshuler:

We didn’t get together as often.

Hellrigel:

Northeastern is still dear to your [01:17:20] heart. I understand that you do some philanthropy work with them.

Altshuler:

Yes, I actually set up an endowment there, $50,000. It’s used to support undergraduate physics students who are going to [01:17:40] graduate school.

Hellrigel:

Do you get to meet them?

Altshuler:

Yes. I’m usually invited out to lunch with the recipients, but for the pandemic we Zoomed with [01:18:00] them.

Hellrigel:

You’ve done similar for Tufts.

Altshuler:

Yes, I gave them an endowment for the Physics Department, and they use it for kind of various types of activities.

Hellrigel:

[01:18:20] Are you more active with Northeastern than Tufts?

Altshuler:

Yes, I was only at Tufts for a year, so I wasn’t quite as close.

Hellrigel:

You’re, at this lab now, [01:18:40] Sylvania Electric, and this is where your cousin works?

Altshuler:

Yes, he was the head of his division, and he was the one that interviewed me and basically hired me.

Hellrigel:

So, he’s in [01:19:00] charge of the Microwaves & Antenna Department?

Altshuler:

No, he’s in charge of the whole Research Department.

Hellrigel:

Oh, the entire Research Department. How, how did that interview go?

Altshuler:

Very well. I mean, they were looking to hire people, to be honest.

Hellrigel:

[01:19:20] Well, Sylvania, I remember the televisions.

Altshuler:

Yes

Hellrigel:

And tubes?

Altshuler:

Their first laboratory was right next to Northeastern University on Forsyth Street, and then they built a new [01:19:40] building out on 128. We moved out there, I think, in the spring. I started working for them in December, I believe. We moved out to Waltham, [01:20:00] Massachusetts in 1955.

Hellrigel:

In the IEEE Boston Section, did you know Julian Bussgang?

Altshuler:

Very well.

Hellrigel:

He was my first solo IEEE oral history.

Altshuler:

[01:20:20] Well, that’s nice to know. Yes, Julian is a terrific guy. He was the Chairman of the Boston Section right before I met him. I have a photo of him handing me his gavel.

Hellrigel:

Oh, we should get a copy of that and put it in [01:20:40] your oral history. Take a look at his oral history. Actually, I drove him down to the IEEE Milestone dedication at MIT. This would have been in 2016. [01:21:00] I’d have to check the date, but he was my first victim. I met him and his wife.

Altshuler:

I knew him pretty much while we were both in the Boston Section. We were there together probably a good ten years. [01:21:00]

Hellrigel:

He built his office near Waltham, and he had talked about that was good so that he could get home at night. I always ask about work-life balance and [01:21:40] he said that he made a conscious decision to get home and then go back if he had to the lab or the office, but that he would be home for supper with the kids.

You’re in that neck of the woods.

How do you end up in Microwaves & [01:22:00] Antenna department?

Altshuler:

Well, that’s where the opening was.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

When I spoke with Lenny Sheingold, he said, “I can offer you a position working in that department,” and that seemed fine to me, because I was working for my master’s [01:22:20] thesis in microwaves.

Hellrigel:

And at this point you’ve finished the thesis and you’re done with Tufts. Then you left Harvard.

Altshuler:

[01:22:40] Yes.

Hellrigel:

What do you think your future’s going to be now? On January 1st, 1955, what’s life looking like?

Altshuler:

Well, when I left Harvard, I went to work at Sylvania Electric, and I [01:23:00] heard that there was an employee who was able to take classes during the day at MIT. They didn’t have any formal programs for an employee to do it officially, but I [01:23:20] spoke with my boss, Carl Faflick, who was also a King student graduate. He said, “Well, if you can get accepted back to Harvard then you can take the time off,” and I spoke [01:23:40] with Professor King and he in turn said that I could come back part time.

Hellrigel:

Did you still have to work full time?

Altshuler:

I was basically given a time off with pay.

Hellrigel:

[01:24:00] Okay, okay. That works.

Altshuler:

It was a very nice gesture on the part of Carl Faflick to allow me to do that.

Hellrigel:

This was all done verbally? It was not a contract? Did they try to secure a deal with you, for example stating, you owe us ten years of your [01:24:20] life afterwards?

Altshuler:

No, under the table.

Hellrigel:

When do you start up back at Harvard again, 1955?

Altshuler:

I was trying to figure that out.

Hellrigel:

1956?

Altshuler:

I think [01:24:40] it was probably the fall of 1956. I took one course each semester with Professor King, and that worked out well. So, in 1957, [01:25:00] I decided I could try and take two courses.

Hellrigel:

Now, you decided, or did you have to plead with Professor King?

Altshuler:

All through Professor King.

Hellrigel:

He gave you a tuition waiver?

Altshuler:

No, [01:25:20] he didn’t give me a tuition waiver, I paid a nominal tuition.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

At the time in graduate school at Harvard the tuition was relatively low, so it wasn’t a problem. I got my [01:25:40] full salary from Sylvania Electric.

Hellrigel:

So, it worked. And at this point you’re single, so you don’t have any burden?

Altshuler:

Not at that time.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

So, 1956, [01:26:00] one course each semester. In 1957, two courses each semester. In 1958 it was decided I should go back full time and finish my coursework.

Hellrigel:

So, you had to leave Sylvania Electric?

Altshuler:

Yes. [01:26:00]

Hellrigel:

How do you make ends meet then?

Altshuler:

I had saved up some money, and I got married [01:26:40] in August of 1958. My wife was working, so we managed to get by okay.

Hellrigel:

Where did you meet your lovely lass?

Altshuler:

[01:27:00] Actually, I was on vacation with friends, and one of the waitresses was from Boston, and she wanted us to get together when she got through. [01:27:20] They had a party, and I met my wife there, and we got together, and I guess I proposed to her on New Year’s [01:27:40] Day and we got married, that following August.

Hellrigel:

Your wife’s name?

Altshuler:

Her name was Sheila Glazer.

Hellrigel:

[01:28:00] Okay.

Altshuler:

She worked for the local radio station. I think it was at the time WEEI.

Hellrigel:

Now you’re back in graduate school [01:28:20] and I imagine at this point there are other graduate students who are also married with families, or at least married at that point.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

And you’re going to take your classes. Did you have to run any labs or anything like [01:28:40] that?

Altshuler:

My first semester back at Harvard I took four classes full time. The second semester I had to pass my qualifying exam [01:29:00] before I could start my thesis.

Hellrigel:

Did you also have to pass a language exam?

Altshuler:

Not until before I graduated.

Hellrigel:

And that’s where the German came in?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

And at this point you’re working with Professor King?

Altshuler:

Oh, wait a minute. You [01:29:20] know, now that I think of it, there were two language exams, French and German.

Hellrigel:

You’re working with King, so did he decide what your dissertation thesis is? How does that work?

Altshuler:

It was a mutual thing. I came up with the idea [01:30:00] of putting a resistor in a dipole antenna, which was generally a very narrow band antenna, and by putting in [01:30:20] this resistor I would make it much more broadband at the cost of losing some efficiency.

Hellrigel:

Meaning it would take more power?

Altshuler:

Yes. But he [01:30:40] thought it was a good idea. So, another thing that was very fortunate, there was an experimental setup that a previous student had built, and I was just with some [01:31:00] modifications, [able] to make it work.

Hellrigel:

How long did this project take?

Altshuler:

It took me probably a year and a half.

Hellrigel:

[01:31:20] And are you going to do your own typing now for this thesis?

Altshuler:

No. My wife decided I would hire one of the secretaries to do the typing. I actually was able to get a draftsman to do my [01:31:40] figures, which was a big help.

IRE

Hellrigel:

At this point you’re an IRE student, and are you reading IRE journals, going to conferences? What’s going on?

Altshuler:

I’m focusing mostly [01:32:00] on the antennas and propagation.

Hellrigel:

And that meant that you joined what IRE called technical groups, maybe?

Altshuler:

Yes, we used to have a weekly meeting [01:32:20] for the members of the chapter.

Hellrigel:

This is the Boston chapter?

Altshuler:

Boston chapter on antennas and propagation.

Hellrigel:

So, you have people from the [01:32:40] labs, the different universities.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

What goes on at these meetings?

Altshuler:

They give a seminar on their research.

Hellrigel:

Okay, and I know sometimes the people I know, the Jersey Coast chapter, they meet once a month and have a program. Some of them [01:33:00] also meet for a more social event such as supper, or dinner.

Altshuler:

Yes, we used to go out to dinner after the seminar.

Hellrigel:

Did, did you have a favorite watering hole that the group went to?

Altshuler:

Well, there were several places, [01:33:20] on 128. We would go to hotels, there were some restaurants, and I know we used to sometimes go to the Marriott hotel which was right down the road. [01:33:40] It was no single place that we went to all the time.

Hellrigel:

Now that you’re close to graduating Harvard, what’s your next, what’s going through your head about what you want to do [01:34:00] next?

Altshuler:

Well, I thought of teaching, but it turned out there weren’t many jobs available around Boston, certainly, and I wasn’t really interested in relocating, [01:34:20] so I went to work for the Air Force [Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, AFCRL]. I felt that they were working in a good area of electromagnetics, and [01:34:40] they offered me a job at a relatively high rating. There was a GS system, and I was offered a GS-13.

Hellrigel:

Oh, that’s a good start.

Altshuler:

The salary was, [01:35:00] I think, $10,700, which at the time was certainly good.

Hellrigel:

In 1960, that’s good.

Altshuler:

Yes, pretty good.

Hellrigel:

If I may ask, how come you [01:35:20] didn’t get drafted?

Altshuler:

I was getting a deferment from college, and then when I went to work for Sylvania, they [01:35:40] got me a deferment because I was working in an area that they felt was essential. I went back to Harvard, and I was once again getting a deferment. I got married, [01:36:00] and I at one point in time looked into joining the Army, and they said that they weren’t recruiting.

Hellrigel:

That’s strange.

Altshuler:

So, I never really got [01:36:20] into the military. The closest I got was when I was at Northeastern, I applied for an Air Cadet program. They were coming around looking for Air Cadets, [01:36:40] and I applied but I never got accepted. So, that was the closest I came to going into the military.

Hellrigel:

Yes, because you would have been really early Vietnam, the Vietnam advisor period [01:37:00] in the early 60s, before we called it a police action. But at this point, you’re married, a couple of years. You graduate from Harvard, and you go then to the Air Force laboratory.

Altshuler:

In the interim, Professor [01:37:20] King really wanted me to stay with my research a little bit longer. I explained that my wife was expecting a baby in December, so it would be very difficult for me to stay [01:37:40] there much longer.

Hellrigel:

Yes. This is the first baby.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

The baby is going to arrive in December of 1960.

Altshuler:

That’s correct.

Hellrigel:

How many children do you have, sir?

Altshuler:

I have four.

Hellrigel:

[01:38:00] Some of them are Baby Boomers, late Baby Boomers.

Altshuler:

Well, it was for part of it.

Hellrigel:

Have any of them become engineers or technologists?

Altshuler:

Well, I [01:38:20] should mention that in 1977, or actually 1976, my wife developed lung cancer.

Hellrigel:

Oh.

Altshuler:

She died in [01:38:40] March of 1977.

Hellrigel:

I’m sorry to hear that.

Altshuler:

I had three children aged seven, nine, and sixteen. So, needless to say, [01:39:00] I was anxiously looking for a wife and a mother for the kids.

Hellrigel:

Oh, boy. How did that impact your work because that’s making you a Mr. Mom, especially for the little [01:39:20] ones.

Altshuler:

I had a neighbor who had two children the same as my younger ones, so when they got through school they’d go to her house. I had some help from my [01:39:40] mother-in-law. But we somehow managed to get through it.

Air Force Research Lab

Hellrigel:

It’s at this point you’re at the Air Force Research Lab.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Did you have to cut back on work?

Altshuler:

[01:40:00] Not to a great extent. For the most part, I was able to continue to work full-time. I got the kids off to school, then I’d go to work, and I’d get home in time to get them [01:40:20] their supper and anything else. It was a very busy year.

Hellrigel:

And your cooking improved?

Altshuler:

[Laughter] Yes, we got through it.

Hellrigel:

That’s rough. [01:40:40]

Altshuler:

Yes. Then the neighbor across the street had a classmate who used to go to her children’s birthday parties, and [01:41:00] she was very well educated. She had a Ph.D. from Rutgers in microbiology, and an M.D. from Tufts.

Hellrigel:

Wow. [01:41:00]

Altshuler:

We hit it off very well, and we got married the following June [25 June 1978].

Hellrigel:

Microbiology and a medical degree, too. I’m a graduate of Rutgers, [01:41:40], undergrad degree in history and biology. I didn’t have any classes in the Waxman Center, where she may have had classes in microbiology. Your second wife’s name, [01:42:00] sir?

Altshuler:

Ruth Liberfarb.

Hellrigel:

She’s walking into a household of -

Altshuler:

Three kids.

Hellrigel:

Three kids, including one teenager. [01:42:20]

Altshuler:

I’d say for the most part it went very well, as well as could be expected. There was a little bit of friction between her and my daughter who was sixteen, but [01:42:40] nothing, I don’t think, too serious.

Hellrigel:

Yes, it’s, it’s just rough all the way around. Then you’re going to have a fourth child?

Altshuler:

Yes, we were married in 1978 and our fourth [01:43:00] child was born May of 1979.

Hellrigel:

Okay, so, there is a bit of a gap there.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Nineteen years. Yes, in my family, our gap, same parents though, is, thirteen [01:43:20] years.

Altshuler:

The gap is close to nineteen years between my youngest and oldest.

Hellrigel:

That’s generational.

Altshuler:

Yes. They’re still very close.

Hellrigel:

[01:43:40] Yes, we are close, too. The baby of the family is going to reach fifty in 2023, so that’ll be a hallmark for the family. When she was born my brother’s friend, the infamous statement is, “my cat’s bigger [01:44:00] than her.” Well, a happy, happy ending after a rough spot for your family.

Altshuler:

We’ve been married now, let’s see, forty-three years.

Hellrigel:

[01:44:20] Forty-three years, that’s a long spell.

Altshuler:

1958. No, I’m sorry, forty-four years.

Hellrigel:

Yes, forty-four. You’re staying at the lab. At this point, I, [01:44:40] I noticed in your autobiography that one of the companies was maybe going to move to Maine and you said “heck, no”?

Altshuler:

Just under two years when I was working with [01:45:00] AFCRL, one of my colleagues [Lou Lamperti] who I had worked with at Sylvania, said that they were looking for a director of engineering, and the president of the [01:45:20] company would like to interview me. So, I met with him, and he told me I’d be supervising a group of about twenty [01:45:40] electrical and mechanical engineers.

Hellrigel:

At Gabriel Electronics?

Altshuler:

At Gabriel Electronics. They had a very good history. They started out as a [01:46:00] company called the Workshop Associates during World War II. Then they were bought out by the Gabriel Company, which actually was a company that specialized in automotive [01:46:20] materials; mufflers, things like that. But they set up this electronics company and they got up to about 400 people.

The company had hard [01:46:40] times and they got down to about 100 people. The president of Gabriel Electronics felt that he could bring it back. So, [01:47:00] I got a raise from I guess it was about $10,700 to $16,000, which is at the time a big increase. They were located in Millis, [01:47:20] Massachusetts, maybe a half-hour commute. Let’s see, I had been looking to buy a house, and I felt that this extra [01:47:40] money would make it a lot easier. So, I bought my first house, I guess, pretty soon after I had [01:48:00] changed jobs to Gabriel. It was quite an experience; what a small company has to go through in order to survive. I mean, they had to push the products out each [01:48:20] month no matter what, and it was really a workout. After being there for close to three years, Gabriel had [taken over] another company up in Maine, [01:48:40] and I really didn’t want to relocate. I had just bought my house, so I checked back with my supervisor from the Air Force Cambridge Research [01:49:00] Labs and there’s something called serendipity.

Hellrigel:

It works out.

Altshuler:

They had gone through a change. [01:49:20] They were looking for a chief for what they called the time of transmission branch, and they offered me that job, so I came back [to AFCRL] as a GS-14. I still took a cut in [01:49:40] pay, but not that substantial. I had a group of about twenty scientists and engineers, and I thought all in all it worked [01:50:00] out rather well.

Hellrigel:

What type of projects are you working on now back at the, the Air Force lab [in September 1963]?

Altshuler:

They were just in the process of building a 29-foot millimeter wave [01:50:20] antenna [on Prospect Hill, Waltham].

Hellrigel:

Wow.

Altshuler:

The previous branch chief didn’t like the fact that his [01:50:40] branch was being moved into the electromagnetics laboratory, so he left, and that left a void. So, I basically took over his branch, and I was supervising the [01:51:00] construction of this new antenna. They had some other projects going on at Prospect Hill, pretty much mostly in [01:51:20] radiometry where they would measure atmospheric characteristics using this radiometer. And probably about--[01:51:40] oh, let’s see--I went back to work for them, I believe, around the fall of 19--

Hellrigel:

Was it 1963?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Your paperwork autobiography state that you returned to the lab in [01:52:20] September 1963 at chief of the propagation branch, and you were there from 1963 to 1982.

Altshuler:

Let me double check.

Hellrigel:

We can check the dates later on.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

That’s a big responsibility.

Altshuler:

Yes, it was, [01:52:40] but fortunately it went very well, and we had that antenna up and working probably within six months after it was built.

Hellrigel:

[01:53:00] And is this going to be used for satellite work?

Altshuler:

There were no satellites.

Hellrigel:

What are they going to use it for then? That was a stupid question.

Altshuler:

We were using it mostly to [01:53:20] investigate the characteristics of the troposphere at millimeter wavelengths. As it turned out, at millimeter [01:53:40] waves there are two main absorption lines. There’s a water vapor line that’s been around 22 gigahertz, and there’s the oxygen line which [01:54:00] is around 60 gigahertz. So, what we had to do is investigate atmospheric attenuation in the windows between these lines.

Hellrigel:

[01:54:20] At this point, is this where some of your patent work comes in?

Altshuler:

Not yet.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

I started out with this [01:54:40] branch of about twenty-odd people, and then they had a reorganization. Two other branches that were working in propagation came into the lab. Then [01:55:00] they finally consolidated us into one large branch, and the senior person who had been there almost from the lab’s inception took over as what they now called a [01:55:20] division.

Hellrigel:

There’s substantial growth within, so they’re solidifying what they want to do, maybe?

Altshuler:

Yes. [01:55:40] I was originally working in propagation. Then I found out that there was an antenna division, so I decided that I might be more comfortable working on antennas. So, [01:56:00] that’s what I did. I transferred to that division and started doing research on antennas. [01:56:20] One of the interesting things, when I worked on my thesis and I submitted it to the Antenna and Propagation Transactions [IRE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation], they looked it over and they said, [01:56:40] gee, this is good, but it’s just much too long. So, I had had a section on mutual coupling of linear antennas, and I had left that [01:57:00] out, but twenty years later I was looking at it and I said, you know, this is still pretty good, so I submitted it to Transactions [IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation], and I got it published.

Hellrigel:

Wow.

Altshuler:

[Laughter]

Publications, Conferences

Hellrigel:

You’ve been [01:57:20] very active with publications and presentations. What were some of the conferences that you attended?

Altshuler:

I would attend, essentially, all of [01:57:40] the antenna conferences each year. I would attend also some IEEE conferences when they had them in New York. I would also attend [01:58:00] URSI conferences. Union of let’s see, Research Scientists International

Hellrigel:

[01:58:20] Your company, or the lab funded you to go to these conferences?

Altshuler:

Oh, yes. They were very research-oriented, and they encouraged people to present papers, and also [01:58:40] to publish papers. I was the type who felt it was very important to publish my results. If it didn’t get into a journal, I [01:59:00] usually published it as a technical report. I really didn’t like to see it go by the wayside.

Hellrigel:

Right. At this point, I guess in a lab you’re working on a team, so were there any people you worked most closely with [01:59:20] in your career?

Altshuler:

Oh, yes. I think probably about [01:59:40] half of my journal papers were published with me as the sole author. I did it also with a group of other scientists and engineers. I thought we were a very productive [02:00:00] group.

Hellrigel:

You’ve remained active. I know we have talked a little bit in the past about your work with the Boston Section [of IEEE]. I guess that started with the Boston Section of IRE. Do you remember the merger of the IRE [02:00:20] and the AIEE?

Altshuler:

I do. It was, I think, around 1960.

Hellrigel:

Yes, they’d been talking about it for a few years. In 1963, they finally ironed the contract dry and the AIEE and IRE merged to create IEEE.

Altshuler:

Yes, they put together AIEE and IRE.

Hellrigel:

What were your feelings [02:00:40] about the merger, if you recall any?

Altshuler:

I don’t think it made that much of a difference. We just consolidated two engineering organizations into probably a much stronger one.

Hellrigel:

Yes, that’s the feeling most people [02:01:00] I talk to have, and, and some of them joked how they didn’t have to pay two fees because they were members of both. Were you ever a member of AIEE?

Altshuler:

No.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

IRE.

Hellrigel:

And so, IRE. Then I noticed that you joined [02:01:20] the IEEE APS (IEEE Antenna and Propagation Society). You were involved with the Boston Section. You’re busy with work, you’ve got a family, so why bother with this professional organization?

Altshuler:

I liked [02:01:40] the opportunity to meet with other engineers and scientists. I think it’s very helpful to hear a talk and then you say, gee, I did this, or I did that to [02:02:00] speak with someone else, and you find out that you have similar interests.

Hellrigel:

What were some of the, I guess, benefits of camaraderie and knowledge exchange? Any [02:02:20] social aspects of it that you liked?

Altshuler:

We used to hold a social gathering once a year where we would present the Fellows [02:02:40] their awards, and usually have a guest speaker. It was very nice socially, but some of us just on our own [02:03:00] would get together.

Hellrigel:

You’ve served on a number of committees. How did you get roped into the awards committee of APS?

Altshuler:

Julian [Bussgang] [02:03:20] invited me to be an officer in the committee.

Hellrigel:

Oh, Julian recruited you to be an officer in the local, the Boston Section, of APS?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

[02:03:40] Are most of your IEEE activities done then at the Boston Section level? Did you go to national or international conferences?

Altshuler:

The [02:04:00] only one that I was involved in was when I was invited to be a member of the Life Member Committee down in New Jersey. Ted Saad [Theodore Saad] and I would drive down [02:04:20] together

Hellrigel:

Okay, so he roped you into that, and driving down the turnpike or Route 95 to Jersey.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

[02:04:40] The Life Members Committee (LMC) has been important to me. They funded my dissertation for one year. I was a 1993 dissertation fellow in electrical history. Why get involved? What did you like about the LMC?

Altshuler:

[02:05:00] I think they were responsible for a lot of programs, who to give money to. Once again, a very nice group of people. [02:05:20] We had set an agenda that covered a wide variety of life member [interests].

Hellrigel:

While this is going on, you’ve been [02:05:40] elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1984. I like to ask people, where were you when you found out that you became an IEEE Fellow? Similar to the question, where were you when you were nominated for the Oscars?

Altshuler:

I was probably in my office, and I got a [02:06:00] letter that mentioned to me that I had been elected a Fellow, and I considered that a rather major honor.

Hellrigel:

What impact has it had on your career, if any?

Altshuler:

[02:06:20] I think you get a lot more recognition when you go to IEEE events.

Hellrigel:

Yes, you get a spiffier name badge.

Altshuler:

You get that little gold [02:06:40] IEEE pin.

Hellrigel:

Yes. What did your buddies at the lab think when you became an IEEE Fellow?

Altshuler:

I think several of them were Fellows, so I kind of sort of joined the group.

Hellrigel:

[02:07:00] It has been a while since you were elected, but do you know who nominated you, or who you can blame for sticking your neck out?

Altshuler:

Yes, Allan Schell.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

Actually, he ran, [02:07:20] for president of the IEEE, but he wasn’t on a nomination committee. He did it sort of independently. He was very active in both the Air Force [02:07:40] and IEEE. [He became an IEEE Fellow in 1973.] He rose to be chief scientist of the Air Force. Very bright guy.

Hellrigel:

[02:08:00] How has IEEE changed during your affiliation with it? If it has changed.

Altshuler:

There was always a [02:08:20] possibility of taking on new committees, so after the Life Members meeting [02:08:40] in Piscataway, we set up a Life Members Committee for the Boston Section, and I was pretty much offered the job of heading that up. Once again, [02:09:00] Ted Saad, who is a wonderful guy, was the one that suggested that I take it over.

Hellrigel:

What did you do on the local level?

Altshuler:

The thing I did is I [02:09:20] arranged for a seminar once a month. I was fortunate to be able to use the Lincoln Laboratory [Auditorium] which was a beautiful [02:09:40] location. You could seat up to 200 people. They would provide us with refreshments before the seminar began. The one thing I also did that worked out very well is that [02:10:00] since many of the attendees were Life Members, and I would start it at 4:00, that way it was easier for them, and [02:10:20] also we’d get a large contingent of Lincoln Lab employees.

Hellrigel:

Yes, better for driving. Driving in the dark is a pain in the butt.

Altshuler:

A lot of people were able to come directly from work to Lincoln Lab. [02:10:40] so that worked out extremely well. I was fortunate to get outstanding speakers. Several of them would fill up the auditorium. We used to have a couple hundred people. For example, when [02:11:00] the inventor of the World Wide Web, who was at MIT, gave a seminar, my goodness, it was filled right up. I have in my autobiography a [02:11:20] list of all the seminars that were given over a ten-year period, and the average attendance was about sixty people.

Hellrigel:

That’s quite a [02:11:40] commitment by your group. You were chair of this for twelve years, so how did you relinquish the office?

Altshuler:

When I retired in 2010, I decided [02:12:00] that it wasn’t for me to continue.

Hellrigel:

Did you get to pick your successor?

Altshuler:

For the most part. It was once again mutual. I asked someone whether they would be interested in taking [02:12:20] over, and they did. But unfortunately, things were never the same. What eventually happened is that Lincoln Lab kind of threw us out of [02:12:40] their auditorium and we would hold meetings in their lunchroom, actually. It wasn’t quite the same. It [02:13:00] wasn’t what it used to be, but we’d still try and hold meetings.

Hellrigel:

So, you’ll still go to the Life Member meetings?

Altshuler:

Oh, yes. Of course, we had trouble with the pandemic. We did some Zoom. [02:13:20] Half a loaf is better than none.

Hellrigel:

Right. Do you still attend the regular Boston Section meetings?

Altshuler:

No. I’m out of that completely.

Hellrigel:

Do you go to any [02:13:40] APS meetings anymore? Conferences?

Altshuler:

No, I must say, after I retired, I pretty much stopped going to all meetings.

Hellrigel:

Many people have done that. They’ve [02:14:00] lost funding, or they don’t really have the need to hustle like that anymore.

Altshuler:

Well, the thing is, technology is just booming, and I find it hard to understand the papers that are given in the [02:14:20] Transactions or the Antenna and Propagation Magazine.

Hellrigel:

Yes. I was talking to someone yesterday and they were talking about the wireless again, The History Center, we’re working on an exhibit about Edwin H. Armstrong, [02:14:40] radio, and “the wireless;” it’s a different wireless.

Altshuler:

Yes, now they have, I think, their own publication, Antenna, Propagation, and Wireless [IEEE Antenna and Wireless Propagation Letters]. They got the [02:15:00] Antenna and Propagation Transactions [IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation], and IEEE Antenna and Propagation Magazine.

Hellrigel:

There are too many to keep up with. There are more than 2,000 conferences a year, and more than I don’t know, 200-plus publications, [02:15:20] and that’s not counting newsletters.

Altshuler:

Yes. Unbelievable.

Patents

Hellrigel:

In regard to your patents, where did your patents come in?

Altshuler:

Okay, the first one, actually, was a takeoff on my thesis where I had done work, well, let me go back to the beginning. I started out by [02:16:00] placing a resistor in the dipole antenna, or monopole antenna. That had a resistance of 240 ohms. Then I looked into antennas that had an [02:16:20] input impedance of about 240 ohms, and I found a folded dipole. If I replaced the resistor and put the dipole in that location, [02:16:40] then the antenna also was broadband. So, I basically got a patent on that configuration where the resistor was replaced by this [02:17:00] folded antenna. [Double-Folded Monopole, Patent No. 5,289,198, Feb. 1994. E. E. Altshuler.]

Then I got into a new area of genetic algorithms, and there was an optimization [02:17:20] technique where what we did, basically, tossed a half-dozen wires into a box, and what the algorithm would [02:17:40] do is just start out with randomly selecting a configuration of wires, and you would measure the performance of [02:18:00] a configuration, and then you would go further, and what the algorithm would do is it would basically compute the performance of each [02:18:20] configuration, and those configurations were each assigned a chromosome, and what you would come up [02:18:40] with the first go-around is a group of configurations, each represented by a chromosome, and each of them would have a particular performance. So, then what you would do is you would mate chromosomes that have the best performance. [02:19:00] [A Process for the Design of Antennas using Genetic Algorithms, Patent No. 5, 719,794, Fe. 1998. E.E. Altshuler and D. S. Linden.]

Hellrigel:

So, you’re going to predict--

Altshuler:

It would do that. It would do that by, say, [02:19:20] taking a chromosome with like eight genes, and you split it in half, and you take one half from one configuration and mate it with a second half of another [02:19:40] configuration. So, now you have come out with a new design with a better performance than what you had previously. It’s sort of like optimization where you [02:20:00] continue to go through this process each time, and finally, you would come out with a configuration that had the best performance of all that you’ve [02:20:20] tested.

Hellrigel:

I don’t want to sound stupid, but what was the purpose of this?

Altshuler:

It was an optimization technique. It was an antenna having, say, for example, the best [02:20:40] gain, the best bandwidth - -.

Hellrigel:

For different situations, given--

Altshuler:

Oh yes. You would say, you’re looking for an antenna that has a low VSWR, [02:21:00] a wide bandwidth, a certain space configuration, and you would try and find [02:21:20] one that gave you what I’ll call the best performance.

Hellrigel:

That’s what I was going to say. You’re jumbling all these parts with your algorithm to produce the best for a certain situation.

Altshuler:

Yes, sort of survival of the fittest. Really to take the [02:21:40] ones that kind of kept on improving and--

Hellrigel:

How long does this project take?

Altshuler:

Well, - ---

Hellrigel:

Or should I not ask?

Altshuler:

This is another interesting thing. I authored a paper that uses a genetic [02:22:00] algorithm, and I said to myself, gee, why can’t I use this to design an antenna? But I didn’t have the computer [02:22:20] knowledge to actually implement this. So, it turns out there was a young [lieutenant] working in a lab who I was told was very good computationally. I explained to him what had to [02:22:40] be done, and within a couple of weeks he had the algorithm working. Now, in those days it was probably, what, the 1980s-- --and everything was [02:23:00] reasonably slow computationally, but then things got a lot better. So, he was able to run this algorithm in like an hour or two, rather than a day or two.

Hellrigel:

That’s fantastic. [02:23:20]

Altshuler:

Yes. There were many papers where we used the genetic algorithm to design an antenna.

Hellrigel:

Looking back at your [02:23:40] career, because I kept you a long time and I don’t want to wear you out, and we can have another meeting to fill in where we didn’t, if you want. But are you content with your career? You’ve accomplished so much. You’ve had some personal challenges, [02:24:00] a blackout, and worse. Are you where you thought you would be when you graduated high school? Did you meet your personal expectations or attain your dreams?

Altshuler:

Far beyond. Far beyond. When I graduated high school, I had no knowledge [02:24:20] of graduate school and technology. There wasn’t much around. An area that we haven’t discussed that I should mention is that I was selected to be the chairman of a NATO [02:24:40] research study group. NATO had a number of these groups in different areas, and mine was basically millimeter wave propagation.

Hellrigel:

Yes, I got that. Almost twenty years; that’s a long [02:25:00] commitment.

Altshuler:

Actually, they usually last a few years; mine lasted seventeen years. I had a nice collection of scientists from the different NATO countries, and we would [02:25:20] hold sort of experiments where the countries would participate and conduct them. It was very successful.

Hellrigel:

How did you get selected to work on something like this? [02:25:40]

Altshuler:

[02:26:00] [One of the Air Force hierarchies was a] NATO member, and he was the one who suggested that a research [02:26:20] study group be formed. Since he was the one that suggested it, he picked me to be the chairman of that group.

Hellrigel:

Are you [02:26:40] allowed to tell me who it is?

Altshuler:

He was a colonel from the Air Force Research Lab.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

[02:27:00] Actually, it was the Frank J. Seiler Laboratory, which was in Colorado Springs. He came and I forget what the occasion was, but in any case, he asked me if I would be interested in being the chairman of that group, and I was anxious to do that. I [02:27:20] thought it was a wonderful opportunity.

Hellrigel:

So, you had to go through security clearance and all of that?

Altshuler:

Oh, yes. Yes, it was a NATO protocol where we started out having a meeting, [02:27:40] I believe in London, and there were probably about--oh, maybe eight or ten people from the different NATO countries. There was Canada, there was England, there was France, there were the [02:28:00] Netherlands, there was Germany, Italy, Belgium; quite a few.

Hellrigel:

You’re going to be put in charge of this massive project, so you’re going in as the leader?

Altshuler:

[02:28:20] We had to come up with some experiments where we had the expertise to conduct them. Each of the members would go back to his laboratory and form [02:28:40] a group who would partake in the experiment, and each of them did that. We came up with different experiments that were conducted jointly.

Hellrigel:

[02:29:00] Each lab then specialized in something and collectively--

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

At this point, you’re working for NATO, so it’s a defense system? What are you tasked with? [02:29:20]

Altshuler:

Each of these research study groups had an area that would be of interest to NATO. You know, [02:29:40] their programs.

Hellrigel:

Did you have latitude with your projects? You’re developing projects, so do you have freedom to do what you want?

Altshuler:

Yes, we did. [02:30:00] Obviously, we had to get the approval of my boss in order to participate in this experiment, and other people who would work with me.

Hellrigel:

At this [02:30:20] point, this is mind-boggling.

Altshuler:

[I would look for people from other research labs and decide who were] best suited to [02:30:40] [participate in our joint experiments]. They would be invited to attend the meetings and then collaborate with people from the other countries.

Hellrigel:

What did you like about this research?

Altshuler:

[02:31:00] I think it was relevant to NATO. I must confess, I also enjoyed the traveling, going to the other NATO countries, meeting with the people.

Hellrigel:

[02:31:20] How much were you out of the country? Perhaps once a month?

Altshuler:

No, usually once a year.

Hellrigel:

Once a year.

Altshuler:

If there was an active experiment going on, then you might have to go more often.

Hellrigel:

Did this interfere with your [02:31:40] regular job?

Altshuler:

No. I was encouraged by the commander of the laboratory to participate in this.

Hellrigel:

Were you allowed [02:32:00] to pick your people that you wanted to work with?

Altshuler:

Pretty much.

Hellrigel:

This is a project that any academic would just be over the moon over, it’s such an opportunity.

Altshuler:

[02:32:20] Yes, I know. I know a lot of professors from the various universities, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, - - many.

Hellrigel:

Are you allowed to say what came out of this? [00:32:40]

Altshuler:

Well, I wound up writing a report, about sixty pages, which summarizes the results that we got in all of these programs.

Hellrigel:

For seventeen years. [02:33:00]

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Did the funding dry up or did you just have enough funds?

Altshuler:

Well, I think it was a combination. What they did is they decided to break my research study group up into [02:33:20] two or three study groups, and I decided that I would just bow out and let the people who had been in my group take over these other ones. [02:33:40] So, seventeen years is a long time.

Hellrigel:

You’re working with, well, all the branches of service at this point. Did it bring you down to Washington, D.C. to deal with the Pentagon?

Altshuler:

Oh, [02:34:00] yes. I used to have to [attend a] meeting at least once a year where we would report on the results that we had obtained.

Hellrigel:

[02:34:20] It’s just mindboggling. Oh, so interesting. As a historian you teach about the Manhattan project. This year I was at the Johns Hopkins Laboratory outside of D.C. where they made the proximity fuse, so I got to touch one of the early prototypes. [02:34:40] It’s mindboggling. I guess at some point some of it becomes declassified, but some of it doesn’t.

Altshuler:

We try to limit ourselves to things that could be published.

Hellrigel:

Right.

Altshuler:

[02:35:20] I had one interesting experience. I was invited to give a paper at a conference where I summarized the work that we were doing at NATO. I had to get [02:35:20] it approved by my organization, and they deleted almost all of it.

Hellrigel:

So, you submit the paper, and then they line it out? [02:35:40] How did that feel?

Altshuler:

Not good. I had someone from another country get the approval and I was able to do the paper. But the ironic thing was that almost all of the results that I was presenting were from other countries. [02:36:20]

Hellrigel:

You’re at NATO during some trying times. You’re working with NATO. You know, it’s Vietnam, and then the rise of the Cold War again.

Altshuler:

[02:36:40] Well, I’d say it was before our time.

Hellrigel:

Well, U.S. military action ended in Vietnam. Globally, you had the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and additional countries joined NATO. Did any of the [02:37:00] political things happening globally impact your work, if you can comment? For example, during the Reagan era did you get more funding as they ratcheted up military spending?

Altshuler:

Sufficient [02:37:20] funding for my travel. But when we’d hold the conference, the yearly conference in other countries, they would roll out the red carpet. They would wine and dine [02:37:40] us, give us good tours of laboratories. When I held it here, I couldn’t get a nickel. I had to invite them to my home for [02:38:00] dinner, and I was able to get them onto the base so that they could see the research going on at our lab. So, all in all, we got through it okay.

Hellrigel:

[02:38:20] This was one of the highlights of your career?

Altshuler:

I’d say so.

Career highlights

Hellrigel:

If you had to pick three of the highlights of your career, NATO would be one. What else would you say?

Altshuler:

[02:38:40] Oh, certainly the IEEE. Also, I served on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Air Force where we were working on a project of atmospheric effects on millimeter wave propagation. I had done [02:39:00] a lot of work there, so they invited me to join a group, mostly professors from various universities. We went around to see what kind of research they were doing. Then we finally wrote a final report [02:39:20] on it.

Hellrigel:

And that must have been fun, though, because you have a lot of connections domestically, and then a lot internationally.

Altshuler:

Well, I think that we had the chairman of the [02:39:40] group, a professor from Stanford, Mike Villard. He was the one who brought the group together. He had been aware of my publications, so he asked me to join the group.

Hellrigel:

[02:40:00] I noticed you also did some teaching with graduate students.

Altshuler:

I liked the idea of teaching, so I filled out an application at [02:40:20] Northeastern telling them I’d like to teach. They started me out with a course on probability and statistics.

Hellrigel:

Based in the math department or was your course based in another department? [02:40:40] Statistics?

Altshuler:

No, actually, I was in the engineering management department. Then after that, part of that [02:41:00] covered an area in operations research, so then I taught courses in operations research. Then I taught courses in decision theory, and then the [02:41:20] chairman of the electrical engineering department said why are you teaching in that department when you real background is in microwaves? So, he asked me if I’d teach a course on microwave [02:41:40] engineering, so I did that for some time. Then that course dwindled down, and by then computational work had come in. I didn’t have much of a background in that [02:42:00] at all, so I decided after twenty-seven years, I would retire, and they gave me a rocking chair. [Laughter]

Hellrigel:

With the Northeastern logo?

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

That’s cool.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

[02:42:20] That’s more than many people get. That’s fantastic. Did you have any graduate students over the years? Did your direct thesis or dissertation projects?

Altshuler:

Yes. When I was working [02:42:40] at the lab on genetic antennas, I mentioned there was a young officer who worked with me.. He wound up going to MIT and I was basically [02:43:00] supervising his research. I was on his thesis committee.

Liberfarb:

Don’t you think that was a highlight of your career?

Altshuler:

My wife is [02:43:20] commenting.

Hellrigel:

She gets to edit. She gets to edit.

Liberfarb:

What’s his name?

Hellrigel:

Yes, what’s his name?

Altshuler:

The student’s name was Derek Linden. [02:43:40] He earned his doctorate at MIT, and I was invited to his graduation. The speaker was Bill Clinton.

Hellrigel:

Wow. That’s a big fish.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Liberfarb:

I just have to say that [02:44:00] I’m really enjoying the way you ask questions. I think that one thing my husband doesn’t say, but it’s very true about him, is that for an engineer, he’s very sociable and [02:44:20] gets along with people very well. And that’s unusual for scientists. I think this is reflected throughout his whole career, and why he got so many opportunities. While he was working at Hanscom he got into so many [02:44:40] other different avenues. He wasn’t nose to the ground. He would mull around, looking for interesting things.

Hellrigel:

Well, yes. He’s jumped at different opportunities, and he’s stayed flexible. I’m a historian, [02:45:00] and what I try to do in these oral histories is not get into the proverbial weeds, because some of the technical achievements are a bit over my head. I want the oral histories to be readable and understandable to junior high school students on up. We use them for IEEE history projects, promotional storytelling, and things [02:45:20] like that. You’ve also worked on some pretty mysterious projects and products, but you’ve made them approachable to the lay public.

Altshuler:

I should mention, when I was at the [02:45:40] lab, the commander said that he was going to have to close down our division. I was pretty much supported to be the liaison [02:46:00] between the lab and Congress. I contacted Senator [Ted] Kennedy’s office, and he was extremely supportive of our [02:46:20] research. He dragged the Secretary of the Air Force and the Commander of AFRL into his office. In no uncertain terms he said, “Do not do this, or else.” [02:46:40] And they backed off.

Hellrigel:

Fantastic.

Altshuler:

I had the pleasure of meeting Senator [Ted] Kennedy. It turns out that [I knew some of his relatives in Winthrop]. He [02:47:00] was really extremely helpful in giving us another ten years.

Hellrigel:

Wow. Do you have a photo with him?

Liberfarb:

Yes.

Altshuler:

Yes, I have one of him and myself shaking hands, with [02:47:20] an inscription thanking me for what I did for the lab.

Hellrigel:

We can use that photo. I know you have written your autobiography and I bet it includes that photograph.

Altshuler:

Did you ever speak with Mike Geselowitz about it?

Hellrigel:

Yes, I did yesterday. [02:47:40]

Altshuler:

Did he tell you he has it?

Hellrigel:

Yes, and I’ve actually seen it. The History Center was on the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology, we moved to the IEEE Operations Center in Piscataway. In regard to your autobiography, you worked on it in 2016, 2017? [02:48:00]

Altshuler:

I worked on it when the pandemic hit. I went through all my memorabilia, and I said, gee, I’ve [02:48:20] had so many wonderful experiences that I should document them, and that’s what I proceeded to do.

Hellrigel:

Geselowitz circulated the book, your autobiography.

Quite honestly, the pandemic hit, and I was physically, via an email, [02:48:40] chased out of the office. In mid-March 2020, I was giving a lecture for the IEEE Foundation on Edison, and I got a lecture-- an email from security that told me I had to get out of the building as soon as my lecture was done. It takes me about an hour to come down and pack up. [02:49:00] It was a lecture, with 400 to 500 people on a Zoom. Later, in October 2020, we packed up our office in Hoboken and moved to Piscataway.

Altshuler:

I also gave Mike a copy of a book I wrote, The Rise and Fall of Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories.

Hellrigel:

Okay, I will look for it.

Altshuler:

The lab started when the [02:50:00] Radiation Lab at MIT and the Radio Research Lab at Harvard broke up because the war [World War II] was over, and the Air Force decided that they would hire these scientists and [02:50:20] engineers to form a research lab, and that was done in 1945.

Hellrigel:

Oh, the Rad Lab. There was a big oral history project on the Rad Lab. This is the Rad Lab, right?

Altshuler:

Yes. The one that Ted Saad was [02:50:40] heavily involved in.

Hellrigel:

Yes, I’ve used some of that when I’ve given papers at history conferences, but also, I gave a paper, the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A group of IEEE members started an IEEE Life Members group [02:51:00]. I gave the first lecture there, and I was on the road in 2019, I was on the road sixty days.

Altshuler:

Wow.

Hellrigel:

Then all of a sudden, boom, in early February I attended a Region 6 meeting in Los Angeles, gave a lecture in [02:51:20] March for the IEEE Foundation, and literally it’s like the wall came down. The office closed and we worked from home. Right now, I’m at home because we’re in cubicles, and I can’t record an oral history in open space with somebody two feet from me. [02:51:40] We’re in the process of unpacking our lab, but I’ll look for your material. Rob [Robert Colburn] talked highly of it. I thought it was two volumes. There’s someone else that he worked with too that wrote a two-volume autobiography a few years before you, [02:52:00].

Altshuler:

This rise and fall of AFCRL, I was able to collect all the significant accomplishments that the lab had.

Hellrigel:

Yes.

Altshuler:

They were fantastic. [02:52:20] I mean, this lab had an outstanding group of scientists and engineers and made many major contributions to the Air Force. The important thing was that [02:52:40] when it was first started, 1945, they said they were going to move us out to Wright Patterson Air Force Base as soon as possible, and it took sixty-five years.

Reflections and closing remarks

Hellrigel:

Yes, I was actually [02:53:00] there. Before I came to IEEE, I was an academic and I interviewed at Wright State. I took a tour of the, the labs out at the Air Force base, because they were creating a [02:53:20] public history program to train people to do oral histories and museum studies. One of the big projects was an oral history of the Air Force out there.

You retired because you didn’t want to move to [02:53:40] Ohio?

Altshuler:

Yes. I had forty-nine years, and I was looking to get a fifty-year pin with a diamond in the center, but I couldn’t do it.

Hellrigel:

If it were the age of COVID you would’ve been able to work at home and you would’ve gotten your pin.

Altshuler:

Well, [02:54:00] this was long before.

Hellrigel:

Yes, in 2010, right? So, nearly ten years.

Altshuler:

I retired in 2011.

Hellrigel:

What have you been doing since then?

Altshuler:

I spend a good [02:54:20] part of my time down in the gym. I try to work out every day, and I try to get together for lunch with friends.

Hellrigel:

And with [02:54:40] four children you have a big enough family.

Altshuler:

Yes, we get together for birthdays.

Hellrigel:

Are any of your children engineers or technologists?

[At this point, Dr. Edward Altshuler’s wife, Dr. Ruth M. Liberfarb, joined the interview.]

Liberfarb:

Yes, his son.

Altshuler:

One of them graduated MIT [02:55:00] with a doctorate in Computational Biology.

Liberfarb:

Youngest one.

Altshuler:

The youngest one, [02:55:20] and then the next youngest, David, graduated from the University of Chicago with a doctorate in Anthropology. But not into [02:55:40] engineering.

Hellrigel:

He’s into teaching now?

Altshuler:

No, actually, he’s a financial advisor for a company, a brokerage company.

Hellrigel:

Steadier employment. Academia has [02:56:00] kind of caved in.

Altshuler:

He thought about academia, but then--

Liberfarb:

Couldn’t get a job.

Altshuler:

He couldn’t get a job.

Hellrigel:

My boss, Mike Geselowitz, has a Ph.D. in anthropology.

Altshuler:

Oh.

Hellrigel:

Yes.

Altshuler:

I didn’t know that.

Hellrigel:

His father, David [02:56:20] Geselowitz, was one of the inventors of pacemakers.

Altshuler:

Wow. I have one.

Hellrigel:

Mike Geselowitz’s undergraduate degree is from MIT in, I think, EE. Then he went to Harvard for the Ph.D. [02:56:40], but he hasn’t been an academic.

Altshuler:

I’ve met Mike a number of times, very nice guy. I used to see him when I’d go to Life Member Committee meetings.

Hellrigel:

Yes, [02:57:00] he goes to those. They meet virtually now, and occasionally I’ll go to them if he cannot attend. I’m working with Maxine Cohen and T. Scott Atkinson to encourage some of them to do oral histories. So far, I’ve trained seventy-two IEEE members [02:57:20], and four people have recorded oral histories as the interview. It’s a process. What often happens is I’ll train someone and then they’ll say, okay, you do it. [02:57:40] They get a little nervous about it. But once you do one you are on your way. This [recording virtually via WebEx] is a little less nerve wracking than traveling with my equipment to a conference and never knowing if it’s getting damaged on the plane or something.

Altshuler:

Very user-friendly.

Hellrigel:

Yes. [02:58:00] Webex, all is good, so far, my little red light is on. When we’re done, I’ll get the digital copy, and send it out to the transcription company. It might take three, four weeks until we get it back. However, I have a back log of transcripts to edit. Once I edit it, I will send it to you for review. We’ll [02:58:20] work together it.

Altshuler:

That’s not a problem because I’m retired. I have plenty of time.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

I’ll look forward to it.

Hellrigel:

I’ll send you that release form. If not tonight, I’ll get it out tomorrow morning, that agreement form. If you can think of other IEEE members, especially Life Fellows who should record an oral history, let me know, [02:58:40] before my NIC money runs away. In the Boston area, I recorded Julian Bussgang’s oral history.

The other last thing I’d like to say, the Boston section has been very big [02:59:00] with the IEEE Milestones. Gil Cooke has worked on IEEE Milestones. Do you know Gil Cooke?

Altshuler:

I’m not too close with him now.

Hellrigel:

Cooke has proposed some milestones. In late October, Woods Hole is going to [02:59:20] have a milestone for the Alvin submersible that will be virtual. If I get a link, I’ll send you the link, if you want to attend virtually.

[IEEE Milestone, #230. Alvin Deep-Sea Research Submersible, 1965-1984. Dedicated 21 October 2022.]

Altshuler:

Yes. Actually, I did a couple of milestones. One [02:59:40] was Boston, the first city, I believe, to have a railroad, or--

Hellrigel:

Oh, the subway. [IEEE Milestone, #52, Power System of Boston’s Rapid Transit, 1889. Dedicated 10 November 2004.]

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

Yes, it predated New York City’s which opened in 1904.

Altshuler:

Yes. I think we were the [03:00:00] first to have a fire alarm system. [IEEE Milestone, #50. Electric Fire Alarm, 1852. Dedicated 1 October 2004.]

Hellrigel:

Yes, yes. I have a great image, I think it was from Harper’s Weekly, of a New York City Street scene [03:00:20] where they have the poles and all these wires on it. You had fire alarms there were all of these different companies, and they would just string their own wires up. You had burglar alarms, you had fire alarms, you had special telegraphs, then you had the phone companies. It looked [03:00:40] like a maze. Then of course, the whole AC/DC bugaboo that really was more propaganda between corporations.

Altshuler:

Oh, yes. It really was cutthroat between Edison

Hellrigel:

Well, [03:01:00] between the GE people, what became GE (successor of Edison General Electric) and Westinghouse. When you look at the technology, at that point in 1887 you didn’t need AC, right? But [03:01:20] Edison with his DC system had the most successful company at that point. He was cornering the market, and Westinghouse wanted a new revenue stream, so he’s going to back AC. Then you have the media campaign, “war of the currents,” “battle of the systems” or whatever.

Altshuler:

One last thing I [03:01:40] should mention, because it’s very close to home. I set up an endowment for the Antenna and Propagation Magazine to award the person with the [03:02:00] best paper.

Hellrigel:

Right, right. I forgot that. Sorry. Yes, for the best paper published in their magazine.

Altshuler:

Yes. They have several for the [03:02:20] Transactions, but they didn’t have any for the magazine. I spoke with Ross Stone who was the editor at the time, and he welcomed it. He said, “oh, this would be great.”

Hellrigel:

Yes, the magazines are a bit more [03:02:40] approachable to the general public, too.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

And, so, that helps. I’ve worked with APS [IEEE Antenna and Propagation Society], and I’ve trained some people to do oral histories. That’s where your name came up. You also responded to the call for people to volunteer [03:03:00] themselves for the IEEE Life Fellows oral history project. I had to check with APS because somebody had put down that they were going to interview you, but they got cold feet. It’s nothing personal with you, it’s just that doing oral history is still a little alien to people [IEEE members who have taken my oral history training webinar.]

Altshuler:

Well, it takes [03:03:20] a lot of time and effort, and I appreciate working with you, because you’ve really been great.

Hellrigel:

Well, it’s been fun, sir. What I’m trying to do is train IEEE members to get them started. I’ve got a few more people, [03:03:40] lined up, and you and some of the others are what I call the big fish. Like my nine-hour oral history was with Dick Gowen [Richard J. Gowen, the 1984 IEEE President] at his house in South Dakota. I was vacationing in the area and figured I probably would not be out that way again, [03:04:00]. I wanted to record another oral history with him as an IEEE past president who was also involved with the IEEE Foundation as well as the Air Force and spaceflight technology. Besides, he is a Jersey boy and fellow Rutgers University graduate.

Is, is your wife a Jersey girl?

Liberfarb:

No, [03:04:20] Boston.

Hellrigel:

No, Boston. But you went to Rutgers for your Ph.D.

Liberfarb:

I was born in Boston.

Hellrigel:

Okay.

Altshuler:

We were both born in Boston. We’ll probably die in Boston because we don’t have plans to go anywhere else.

Hellrigel:

My late mom was from East Boston and some relatives moved to Chelsea. [03:04:40] One uncle lives in the retirement complex down by the old Naval yard where he used to work. And so, he’s in great housing because he’s subsidized, that view would be unaffordable for many working-class people. [3:05:00] He worked at the Navy yard and at the Cott’s soda company. He did have great luck, both shut down. An aunt moved to the suburbs, Burlington. [03:05:20] My grandparents lived on Chelsea Street, the main drag in East Boston. When my mother emigrated from Italy to East Boston in 1951, the neighborhood was primarily Italian. [03:05:40] Liberty Market, the grocery store, in the back end of town, used to deliver, but they’re long gone.

Altshuler:

I used to deliver groceries, and meat, and liquor.

Liberfarb:

And films, reels of films.

Hellrigel:

Yes, the films. [03:06:00] Carting those big reels of films around town. Heavy boxes of reels. [03:06:20]

Altshuler:

A couple of times I come into the theater and the people would be stamping on the floor because the reel hadn’t got there on time.

Hellrigel:

Oh, gosh. No, no. It has to be there because the show must go on. [03:06:40]

Altshuler:

It was a different world.

Hellrigel:

Yes, a different world. A fun world.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Hellrigel:

I enjoyed this, sir. Sorry it took a while to get it organized and scheduled. Honestly, I thought more of my seventy-two volunteers [trained IEEE members] would interview their buddies. [03:07:00] Kathy Land (Susan K. Land), the 2020 IEEE President, said IEEE Life Fellows are underrecognized. However, many of the oral history subjects are IEEE Fellows who eventually become Life Fellows. I’m going to now ask her to train as an oral historian, and soon I will record her oral history.

Altshuler:

Okay.

Hellrigel:

Thank you, [03:07:20] sir.

Altshuler:

It was a pleasure talking to you, Mary Ann.

Hellrigel:

Thank you, and thank you to the other good doctor, and I’ll be in touch soon.

Altshuler:

Yes.

Liberfarb:

Thank you.

Hellrigel:

Thank you.

Altshuler:

I should mention, this doctor has done some outstanding research, to the point where she has a syndrome which is [03:07:40] named after her.

Liberfarb:

Oh, boy. That’s right.

Hellrigel:

And what’s the syndrome?

Liberfarb:

The Liberfarb Syndrome. Have you heard of the Marfan syndrome?

Hellrigel:

Yes, ma’am.

Liberfarb:

Getting your name attached to a syndrome is an honor. [03:08:00] I wrote a paper in 1986, and it was published in the American Journal of Genetics. Somewhere some graduated students in Switzerland had found in maybe, [03:08:20] 2019, two other families that had the same syndrome. They did a really excellent review of the literature, and they found my paper. So, they put these together [03:08:40] to make a syndrome and introduced it into the genetics literature. Since then, they’ve found other families. The syndrome has an autosomal recessive pattern of inheritance, and most of the affected persons come from Portuguese families.

Hellrigel:

[03:09:00] Wow.

Liberfarb:

They have retinal detachments and mental retardation and hearing loss, and it was rather serious. I know one of my professors, when he heard that I was honored in this way, he said, “What’s behind this?” “What’s the background story?” The [03:09:20] background story was that my report was there in the literature, and the graduate students recognized that I had made a discovery in the past, and it was unusual for this specific syndrome that I described to have gotten accepted into literature. [03:09:40] When those graduate students, I guess, found it and connected the families, it made news. They also found that the gene product of this particular syndrome was very important in [03:10:00] mitochondrial work. So, that’s why so many of the affected people have so many things wrong with them.

Hellrigel:

This is the Liberfarb syndrome?

Liberfarb:

Yes. Look it up.

Altshuler:

Yes, [03:10:20] Google it.

Hellrigel:

Yes. And has anyone done your oral history?

Liberfarb:

No. My husband wanted me to do something about that, but I didn’t have as many, um, [03:10:40] wide interests as he had.

Hellrigel:

But to still, I would say, think about it. I know there’s a big history of medicine program at Harvard.

Liberfarb:

I actually went to Harvard for a year in my graduate work, and [03:11:00] I think I get some citations.

Altshuler:

You get the citations.

Liberfarb:

Yes, but I think that I once tried to contact Harvard, and I wanted to nominate my husband so that they would [03:11:20] recognize his accomplishments, because he’s just done so many different things. I think it’s because he has such a personable personality, and that’s where he shined. But they didn’t think he was that important. [03:11:40] [Laughter]

Hellrigel:

Well, that’s kind of lame. I listen to lectures from the Royal College of Nursing in the U.K.

Liberfarb:

Oh.

Hellrigel:

Yesterday I listened to a lecture on the history of Down’s syndrome.

Liberfarb:

Oh.

Hellrigel:

A friend’s daughter has Down’s syndrome. I’ll look and see if they have any projects [03:12:00] going, and I’ll, I’ll keep you posted, because you should document your story.

Altshuler:

The syndrome that she originally [03:12:20] studied was called the Stickler syndrome. She was very close to Dr. Stickler; very nice gentleman.

Liberfarb:

I think that everything that I did was more [03:12:40] narrow. What Ed has done is very important, including what he’s accomplished as far as GPS civil defense. During the Arab [03:13:00] war, they actually used some of your inventions.

Altshuler:

Oh, no. You know, one thing is, when I did my thesis on resistive loaded linear antenna, it turns out that the Russians used it [03:13:20] in their publication where they used this resistor, and they called it the Altshuler insertion.

Hellrigel:

Oh, boy.

Liberfarb:

It’s just very nice to be acknowledged for what you accomplished in your life, and [03:13:40] it wasn’t easy. He told me that being a graduate student was the worst time in his life because he had to work so hard, and really it took a long time for him to get recognition. A lot of people would have just dropped out along the way, and he [03:14:00] just persisted. I think it’s nice that you’re doing this, and I congratulate you, and I encourage you to encourage others to do the same thing.

Hellrigel:

I am trying. I have so many voices to capture. [03:14:20] Steve Welby who’s the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of IEEE, gave me permission to be a pester him to record his oral history after he departs from IEEE. People are busy and I do not want to be a pest. [03:14:40] I just had a two-hour WebEx meeting with a gentleman in Russia who is working with me on his oral history and the history of IEEE and computers in Russia.

Although I have trained IEEE members, when it gets around to scheduling someone to be the interviewer, I got an email stating we think a professional should do it, so when can you do it?

Today, what is going on geopolitically [03:15:00] means there are some limitations on where I can travel to record oral history, and possibly who I can work with on oral history projects. When in doubt, I consult the IEEE Compliance/Legal Department and I read U.S. State Department announcements. I have been having these weekly two-hour WebEx meetings with this IEEE member in Russia. I wonder if that is attracting attention.

[Laughter]

Altshuler:

Written a couple of papers, one I called the-- [03:15:20] let’s see--

Liberfarb:

Disinformation?

Altshuler:

Yes. Well, the--

Liberfarb:

False information? Trump’s, um, way of--

Altshuler:

What do they call it, oh, yes, [03:15:40] The disinformation dilemma.

Hellrigel:

Oh.

Altshuler:

Will truth prevail? I actually sent them to our congressional delegation, because I think it’s a sin the way that [03:16:00] people are able to spread false information.

Hellrigel:

Okay, I’m going to turn off our recording now, okay?