2000 IEEE HEINRICH HERTZ MEDAL

Arthur A. Oliner

Arthur A. Oliner was born on March 5, 1921 in Shanghai, China. He received the B.A. degree from Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY and the Ph.D. degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, both in physics, in 1941 and 1946, respectively. 

He joined the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now Polytechnic University) in 1946, and became Professor in 1957. He then served as Department Head from 1966 to 1974, and was Director of its Microwave Research Institute from 1967 to 1982. He was a Walker-Ames Visiting Professor at the University of Washington in 1964. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, the Huazhong (Central China) Institute of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and the University of Rome, Italy. Dr. Oliner’s research has covered a wide variety of topics in the microwave field, including network representations of microwave structures, guided-wave theory with stress on surface waves and leaky waves, traveling-wave antennas, waves in plasmas, periodic structure theory, and phased arrays. His interests have also included waveguides for surface acoustic waves and integrated optics, and, more recently, novel leaky-wave antennas for millimeter waves, and leakage effects in microwave integrated circuits. He is the author of over 250 papers, various book chapters, and the coauthor or coeditor of three books. He is one of the founders of Merrimac Industries, and he is a member of its Board of Directors. He is also a former Chairman of a National Academy of Sciences Advisory Panel to the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST). 

Dr. Oliner has made pioneering and fundamental contributions in several different areas. Early in his career he derived equivalent circuits for all the practical discontinuities on strip line, which were widely used in industry. Also early on, he was the first to present an analysis of radiating slots in rectangular waveguide that included the reactive as well as the resistive effects. Among his many contributions to periodic structures, two are particularly noteworthy. The first was his proof that a surface wave guided by an open periodic structure would turn into a leaky wave when the frequency was raised sufficiently. The second was a completely new theory of Wood’s anomalies on optical gratings, which introduced a guided-wave approach that has been widely adopted since, and led for the first time to a correct explanation for all scattering resonances of this class. He introduced a totally new approach to the analysis of phased-array antennas, which for the first time correctly took into account all mutual coupling effects and explained the scan behavior in both scan planes. His approach reduced the space outside to a single waveguide by employing a unit cell with phase-shift walls that change with scan angle. He is also widely known for his extensive and pioneering studies of leaky waves and their applications, which include systematic analyses of early leaky-wave antennas, and the development, later, of novel leaky-wave structures for millimeter waves. His most recent work involves undesired leakage effects in microwave integrated circuits, which can ruin the circuit performance. He introduced the basic concepts and founded this new and growing area of investigation. 

Dr. Oliner is a Fellow of the IEEE, the AAAS and the British IEE, and was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1991. He has received prizes for two of his papers: the IEEE Microwave Prize in 1967 for his work on strip line discontinuities, and the Institution Premium of the British IEE in 1964 for his comprehensive studies of complex wave types guided by interfaces and layers. 

He was President of the IEEE MTT Society, its first Distinguished Lecturer, and a member of the IEEE Publication Board. He is an Honorary Life Member of MTT-S (one of only seven such persons), and in 1982 he received its highest recognition, the Microwave Career Award. A special retrospective session was held in his honor at the International Microwave Symposium (reported in the December 1988 issue of the IEEE Trans. on MTT, pp. 1578-1581). In 1993 he became the first recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award of the MTT Society. He is also a past U.S. Chairman of Commissions A and D of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), and a member of the U.S. National Committee of URSI. In 1990, he was awarded the URSI van der Pol Gold Medal, which is given triennially, for his contributions to leaky waves.

Arthur Oliner and his wife, Frieda, reside in Lexington, MA, and they have two children, Marian and Eric. His outside interests include classical music and Chinese and Japanese art.