Frederic Richard Morgenthaler

Frederic Richard Morgenthaler (March 12, 1933 — June 21, 2015) was an American electrical engineer and academician, who was a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his tenure, he was the director of Microwave and Quantum Magnetics Group at Research Laboratory of Electronics.

Biography
Frederic Richard Morgenthaler was born on March 12, 1933 in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He received bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. Working on the microwave ferrite devices during his service as lieutenant at the United States Air Force from 1957 to 1959, he has subsequently completed his PhD studies on this topic under Lan Jen Chu at MIT in 1960. He has joined the faculty of MIT at the same year.

During his tenure at MIT, Morgenthaler led the Microwave and Quantum Magnetics Group and was a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, the Center for Material Sciences and Engineering and Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He held the Cecil H. Green Professorship from 1984 to 1986. Morgenthaler's research has focused on microwave magnetics and the electrodynamics. His 1958 work on velocity modulation has pioneered the field of time-varying photonics and metamaterials. Being the author of the textbook The Power and Beauty of Electromagnetic Fields (2011), he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in electromagnetic theory, antennas, circuit theory, and semiconductor electronics. He was a fellow member of the IEEE.

Retiring in 1996, Morgenthaler died on 21 June 2015 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife Barbara Pullen Morgenthaler, his two daughters and four grandchildren.

Textbooks

 * The Power and Beauty of Electromagnetic Fields (2011)