Pierce, John R.
John R. Pierce. (Source: IEEE History Center) John Robinson Pierce was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on 27 March 1910; his childhood locale, however, quickly changed to St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1927 to Long Beach, California.
He entered California Institute of Technology where he received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, with honors, in 1933, an M.S. in 1934, and a Ph.D. (magna cum laude) in 1936. He wrote articles and science fiction stories for Gernsback, to help finance his education.
In 1936, he began his remarkable career at Bell Laboratories spanning 35 years and a host of original creative contributions to an extraordinary number of fields. In 1971, he returned to the California Institute of Technology as Professor of Electrical Engineering.
At Bell Labs, Pierce initially specialized in research on electron multipliers, reflex klystrons, traveling-wave tubes, and microwave research generally. His associates were impressed with the quickness of his mind and the darting, multidirectional thoughts that pinpointed the variety of possible applications that could follow use of a new principle, a new phenomenon, or a new technology. Although he is primarily an engineer, interested most of all in producing a useful application, he is very knowledgeable and able in science. His insatiable intellectual curiosity is accompanied by an impatience to obtain a tangible result. His fellow researchers have long recognized in him an unusual intuitive ability to sense the final answer in a new situation before a rigorous analysis can be made.
While at Bell Labs, he held successively a series of executive positions: Director, Electronics Research (1952-1955); Director. Research-Communications Principles (1958-1962); Executive Director, Research: Communications Principles and Systems Division (1963-1965); and Executive Director, Research: Communications Sciences Division (1965-1971).
At a time when earth satellites were strictly science, Pierce perceived the practicality of application of earth satellites to communications and took important steps to establish the reality of this belief. In 1954, he analyzed alternative possibilities of relay by way of artificial satellite, and in 1955, two years before anyone had boosted a satellite into orbit, he offered the first concrete proposals for satellite communication. He continued his analyses and initiatives; and the space communications work of the Bell Laboratories resulting in the successful Echo satellite communications experiment, in 1960, and the Telstar active satellite experiment, in 1962, were based on his original suggestions. He furnished inspiration and scientific and technical guidance that were essential in the success of these efforts that enlisted the cooperative experimental and development work of many others.
The Telstar satellite used not only his overall systems considerations and proposals but, also, new intricate technological developments in the communications electronics to which he was a major contributor of various original features. Representative of these was the traveling-wave tube, which benefited enormously by his development of the theory of its operation, thus contributing to its stability as an amplifier and also to realization of its broadband capabilities. Crucial too was his invention of a new electron gun geometry which is used in all beam tubes since it gives space-charged-limited flow of electrons – thus providing the maximum beam density theoretically possible. Another Pierce contribution was periodic focussing with permanent magnets – a design feature that reduced the weight of traveling-wave tubes by several orders of magnitude, thus making them useful in satellites.
The contributions cited above are indeed unique and indicate Pierce as the prime leader in the field of satellite communications. Arthur C. Clark, in his Preface to Pierce's book, The Beginning of Satellite Communications (San Francisco Press, 1968), expresses it: "He (John Pierce) has done more than any other individual to bring about the age of space communications."
Increased experience has emphasized that message capacity overload between cities can often be avoided by use of integrated satellite and terrestrial communication facilities. The economic need for this may exert an even greater revolution in domestic communications than supposed at the time of the early experiments.
Pierce has been active in a number of professional societies and organizations. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society and the Royal Academy of Science (Sweden).
Holder of more than 90 patents, and author of 14 technical books and over 200 technical or semitechnical articles, he has sold two poems and one painting and receives royalties on Decca records ("Music from Mathematics" and "The Voice of the Computer"). He has also published 20 science fiction stories, mostly under the pseudonym "J. J. Coupling."
Pierce has been a member of PSAC, and a member of the President's Committee for the National Science Medal, as well as Chairman of two committees (of PSAC and NAS, respectively) that exerted an important influence on the use of computers in higher education and an increase of Government support of linguistic research as compared with support of machine translation.
He has received important awards, too numerous to list, including the Edison Medal, and the National Medal of Science, as well as medals from other countries. He also has been the recipient of honorary degrees from Newark College of Engineering, Northwestern University, Yale University, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Columbia University, University of Nevada, Carnegie Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Bologna.He received the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1975, "For his pioneering concrete proposals and the realization of satellite communication experiments, and for contributions in theory and design of traveling wave tubes and in electron beam optics essential to this success."
Pierce has a son, John Jeremy, who is a newspaper man on the East Coast and writes articles on science fiction. His daughter, Elizabeth Anne, is a specialist in antique dolls and conducts a business in the New York area concerned with buying, selling, and repairing them. Pierce and his wife, the former Ellen R. McKown, reside in California. A British citizen, she was born of Austrian parents in British Honduras. She has lived in Austria, Poland, England, Czechoslovakia, and attended school in the first three as well as in the United States. She studied piano at the Juilliard School in New York and has a master's degree in music from New York University. She presently teaches piano and plays in music groups. John and Ellen live in a Japanese house in California– with a pool and waterfall. They enjoy music and cultivating their garden. (Editor's Note: Dr. Pierce passed away on 2 April 2002)
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