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I immediately started work at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I
was assigned to a group doing advance development work on radar systems, at that time, 3-cm radar.
That summer I invented the wave guide squeeze, or Delta b, electrical phase shifter to be used to simplify
the transmit-receive matching problem. This principle was also used to make it possible to scan the high
resolution Eagle airborne radar antenna, and the blind landing ground control approach, GCA, elevation
antenna.
I went to the United Kingdom in November 1942 to work on radar countermeasures for the Royal Air
Force. In the course of developing an automatic-searching radar jammer, I invented an infinite resolution
radio receiver for use in the automatic radar carrier search receiver of the jammer. This principle was
known as the Strandberg circuit, and it was used for a variety of purposes, ultimately in automatic tuning
automobile radios. The RAF CarpetII which I designed was used most spectacularly on diversionary
landing craft during the Allied invasion of Europe in WWII.
I returned to the United States in September 1943 to work as a project engineer on radar r.f. heads. I
introduced linear feedback automatic frequency control circuits to this technology. The radar system
using my r.f. head at 1.25 cm wavelength was a tactical failure because of atmospheric absorption, which
was eventually traced to the absorption of the radio waves by the water vapor in the air. An r.f. head for
3cm wavelength which was frequency tunable, to avoid jamming, was demonstrated as practical. It was
made possible by my automatic frequency control and the use of short transmitter
pulses.
At the end of the war I started research in microwave spectroscopy. The thrust of this work was to make
the measurements quantitative and the theory analytically compatible with the accuracy of the
measurements. Early work, for example, in collaboration with others, explained the ammonia absorption
fine structure as arising from the nitrogen nuclear quadrupole moment. The essential results of the
entirety of this research were described in a book titled "Microwave Spectroscopy" which was published
in 1954 This book was translated into Russian, and its wide use in both the English and Russian versions
has brought me many of the foreign friends that I have today.
In the years 1954-1956 I worked on understanding and making quantitative the basis for the usefulness of
solid state quantum mechanical amplifiers. This was a publicly held interest on my part, so I claim some
credit for the eventual recognition of the usefulness and the practical realization of solid state microwave
quantum mechanical amplifiers, or solid state masers. My published work, contributions to theory of
the noise properties of masers and to the the6ry of the limitations of their amplifying properties were
seminal.
At this time and later I worked on the rationalization and development of stable frequency and time
sources. The first phase stabilization of sources in the microwave region was one of the results of this
work.
In the years from 1945 on I also served as a consultant to the United States Department of Defense, its
laboratories and its contractors. This work was classified, but it can be said that it involved the
elucidation of the physical bases of defense systems, and their efficient
realization.
I was also retained by companies to do work for their private concerns. This work was essentially that of
studying the physical bases for possible solutions to their problems. Typical work areas were on security of
pay television systems, oil well physical surveying, and oil refinery process
control.
In 1954, in collaboration with another man, I started a microwave instrument company, Strand Labs, Inc.
This company set a standard for frequency stable microwave sources, and for microwave research
instruments. In particular, its microwave bridge for electron paramagnetic resonance measurements was
the basic two-arm bridge circuit with circulator which has become the standard arrangement even in the
newer Varian systems. The company continued in business until the Fall of 1967 when it was sold.
Changes in ownership and management and in business climate gradually caused its
demise.
Several theoretical studies stand out in the publications from 1957 on. One is on the theory of spin-lattice
relaxation, another is an application of the statistical theory of line shapes to paramagnetic resonance line
shape. The paper deriving the spin hamiltonian has beauty and usefulness. The derivation of the
equations governing bottle-neck effects in spin-lattice relaxation is basic. A paper on correlation time
narrowing of NMR and ESR lines in surroundings with less than isotropic symmetry, and recent papers
on the mathematical properties of line shapes, and on the effect of strong r.f. fields on line shapes
complete the set of papers devoted to the theory of magnetic resonance line shapes, spectra, and relaxation
effects.
Work particularly directed to a study of the physics of biomatter has been carried out during the last ten
years. From 1966 to 1968 my interest was directed to trying to identify the charge carrier responsible for
electric conduction in protein molecules, particularly cytochrome c. This work was in collaboration with
Freeman Cope of the U.S.Naval Development Center, Johnsville PA.
In 1969, 1970 I studied the possible use of nuclear magnetic resonance as a tool to characterize
thrombogenic surfaces. This work was in collaboration with Dr. E. Salzinan of Beth Israel Hospital,
Boston MA.
From 1971 to the present I have been studying the physics of electrical processes in membranes, noise in
active trans-port current, the contribution of the active transport current to the apparent membrane
impedance, a physical model of the nerve action potential, and a thermodynamic analysis of oxygen-heme
protein binding. Because of certain realities of research funding this work has had to be a leisure time
activity, but recently some support has been obtained.
My age is outside to range 30-45 years, but I have applied for a fellowship since I feel that what I propose
to do must be done by a man mature in professional physics, and with a nearly full career already
achieved. Such a man can afford to bring to bear the professional imperatives of one scientific discipline
in which he has a sense of achievement to another discipline in which he has no professional involvement,
but still a demonstrated intense interest. A man mid-way in a career simply can not survive unless he
becomes totally involved in the obsessions of one discipline or the other. I have spent ten years
"moonlighting" in thinking about the applications of physics to biomatter, while supporting my work with
the obsessions of solid state physics. It is difficult to be a mature professional in one discipline, an
intelligently knowledgeable person in a second, and a young person all at the same
time.
My "M1T" biography is appended.
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