Mervin Joe Kelly

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Mervin Joe Kelly (born February 14, 1894 in Princeton (Missouri) , † March 18, 1971 in Port St. Lucie , Florida) was an American physicist and manager.

His father, Joseph Fenimore Kelly, was a teacher and director of Mercer County, Missouri College . The great-great-grandfather had come to Virginia from Northern Ireland. His mother was Mary Etta, b. Evans.

Shortly after Mervin's birth, the father had bought a business in Gallatin, Missouri , where he attended school. By the age of 16, he had saved enough money to attend the Missourie School of Mines and Metallurgy in Rolla, Missouri , and study physics and chemistry. After working at a Utah copper mine that summer, he changed his mind about metallurgy and turned to the natural sciences. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1914, he continued his studies at the University of Kentucky, where he received his master's degree in 1915. On November 11, 1915, he married Katharine Milstead from Rolla. He continued his studies at the University of Chicago , where he was assistant to Robert Andrews Millikan and in 1918 his Ph.D. acquired.

At the beginning of World War I, Frank B. Jewett had offered him a position as a physicist at the Western Electric Company, where he did research on electron tubes. In 1925 the research department was spun off as Bell Labs . Here Harold D. Arnold initially distrusted him .

In 1934 (after Arnold's death?) He became head of the research department, in 1944 vice-president and was director of the organization from 1951 to 1959.

He first worked on electron tubes . His group increased the life of telephone amplifier tubes from 1,000 to 80,000 hours.

In 1933 she developed a transmitter tube for transatlantic telephony and radio with 100,000 watts and until 1937 with 250,000 watts. In 1935 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

Kelly initially considered solid-state physics to be unimportant. The tubes could not be used for higher frequencies, however, and when tube technology could no longer be improved at the end of the 1930s, he changed his mind and became the driving force behind Bell's turn to solid-state physics. He started a campaign to attract young Ph.Ds.

In 1940 Russell S. Ohl accidentally discovered the pn junction and the underlying mechanism.

After World War II, Kelly reorganized the laboratories and set up a special department for solid state physics.

As a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, he made sure that his colleagues Walter H. Brattain , John Bardeen and William B. Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize for the transistor.

In 1948 he thought that the university education did not go deep enough and introduced the Communications Development Training (CDT; or Kelly Colleges ) at the Bell Labs . In the same year he established Systems Engineering under director George W. Gilman . (Gilman became a Radio Transmission Engineer in 1940 and Director of Transmission Engineering in 1944. ) In 1952, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

On March 1, 1959, he retired from Bell Labs. Also in 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1945 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences . In retirement he was still a director and consultant for numerous companies.

Publications

  • The value of photo-electrons and the photo-electric properties of some insulators ; 1920
  • The nature of the process of ionization of gases by alpha rays ; 1920; with Victor Hugo Gottschalk and Robert Andrews Millikan
  • The first five years of the transistor ; AT&T, 1953
  • A Transatlantic Telephone Cable ; In Proc. Inst. Elec. Closely. ; London 102B, March 1955, pp. 117-130; with Sir Gordon Radley, GW Gilman, RJ Halsey
  • Oliver Ellsworth Buckley (1887-1959) ; 1961
  • Clinton Joseph Davisson , 1881-1958: A biographical memoir ; 1962
  • The interactions of applied science and technology for the civilian economy and for national security: A case study

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Pierce Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences , Volume 46, p. 191; Vita from p. 210 , and pdf
  2. ↑ Popular Mechanics , Aug. 1930, p. 269
  3. ↑ Modern Mechanix , Nov. 1937, Giant Radio Tube Produced
  4. ^ Member History: Mervin J. Kelly. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 20, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Kelly, Mervin Joe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and manager
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Princeton, Missouri
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1971
Place of death Port St. Lucie , Florida