Samuel Jefferson Mason

Samuel Jefferson Mason (born 1921 in New York City , † 1974 ) was an American electrical engineer . Mason's invariant and Mason's rule are named after him.

biography

Mason grew up in New Jersey . In 1942 he received his Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers University . Mason became a member of the staff of the antenna group at MIT's radiation laboratory , where he received his master's degree in 1947 and his doctorate in 1952 . His doctoral thesis dealt with signal flow diagrams , which is why he is often named as their inventor. After the Second World War , the radiation laboratory at MIT was renamed the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which Mason took over in 1967 after he had been appointed full-time professor in 1959.

He made contributions to systems theory and control engineering, where above all Mason's rule, named after him, is used to determine the overall transfer function of a system. He also dealt with automated text recognition by computer systems that could read text for the blind . He also developed various devices that use photocells to enable blind people to perceive differences in brightness.

Mason died unexpectedly of a brain hemorrhage in 1974 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Paul Penfield: Samuel Jefferson Mason (en) . In: MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science , MIT, January 14, 1997. Archived from the original on February 22, 2007 Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved April 6, 2012.