Dugald C. Jackson

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Dugald Caleb Jackson (born February 13, 1865 in Kennett Square , Pennsylvania , † July 1, 1951 ) was an American electrical engineer and inventor . He led the electrical engineering faculties at the University of Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a total of 44 years. He is also the recipient of the Edison Medal and was President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Career

education

Dugald Caleb Jackson was born on February 13, 1865 to Mary Detweiler (nee Price) and Josiah Jackson in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. His father was a professor of mathematics at Pennsylvania State College , a forerunner of the later Pennsylvania State University . Dugald C. Jackson attended the Hill School in Pottsdam before enrolling in the now renamed Pennsylvania State University to study civil engineering . In 1884 he worked during his studies as an assistant to William Stanley , who later, like Jackson himself, was awarded the IEEE Edison Medal . In 1885 Jackson completed his undergraduate program at Penn State with a Bachelor of Science and continued his education at Cornell University , where he studied electrical engineering for two years . William Arnold Anthony had a significant influence on him there, who had only launched the course in 1882 as one of the first of its kind and wanted his students above all to do further research - a focus that Jackson later passed on as a university lecturer in the same way. In 1887 Dugald C. Jackson completed his academic training.

Experience in business

Immediately after graduation, Jackson and two former fellow students (JG White and Harris J. Ryan) were among the founders of the Western Engineering Company , which was involved in the construction of power plants and trams in Lincoln , Nebraska . After two years, in 1889 he moved to the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company founded by Frank Julian Sprague , which manufactured electrical industrial and traction motors and where he took on the position of Assistant Chief Engineer . Just a year later, the company was taken over by the Edison General Electric Company , for which Jackson then worked as a district engineer.

Change to higher education

In 1891 Jackson followed the call to the University of Wisconsin (UW), where he took over the management of the newly founded faculty of electrical engineering. There he shaped the engineering courses by insisting that his students also be instructed in economics and social sciences in order to "design, organize and manage industrial companies of various kinds" (English: "[...] competent to conceive, organize, and direct extended industrial enterprises of broadly varied characters. " ). In addition, at this time he wrote various technical and textbooks in the field of electrical engineering and worked as an inventor , so from 1898 to 1914 he applied for over 25 patents . After 16 years in Wisconsin, he left the UW in 1907 to take over the direction of the electrical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which he would hold until 1935. At MIT, he subsequently made changes to the curriculum similar to those at UW and also established a graduate program . In 1935 Jackson retired .

His activity in Massachusetts was only interrupted by the First World War, in which the American with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel ) served the American Expeditionary Forces in France as chief engineer and was thus responsible for electricity production and supply for the armed forces.

In parallel to his teaching assignments at the University of Wisconsin and MIT, Jackson continued to work as an engineer and founded an engineering consultancy with his brother William B. Jackson in 1902, for which he worked until 1930. He died on July 1, 1951 at the age of 86.

Honors

In 1905 Jackson was named president of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education . In addition, he was from 1910 to 1911 for a term of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers , which awarded him the Edison Medal in 1938 ; this for the first time explicitly for services in the field of teaching and training. He also served from 1937 to 1939 as President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , which had elected him a Fellow in 1911 . Since 1931 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Personal

Dugald C. Jackson married Mabel Augusta Foss on September 24, 1889, with whom he had two children (born in 1890 and 1895). His brother JP Jackson was also an electrical engineer and professor at Pennsylvania State University.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Book of Members: Chapter J of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , amacad.org, pdf format, 199 kB, p. 1.
  2. ^ Member History: Dugald C. Jackson. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 11, 2018 .