Booker, Henry G.

Physicist (ionospheric physics). Booker (1910-1989) was professor of physics at University of California, San Diego, 1965-1989, where he helped found the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Biography

Henry George Booker was born in England in 1910 and became a U.S. citizen in 1952. He earned his degrees from Cambridge University (B.A. 1933, pure and applied mathematics; Ph.D. 1936, ionospheric physics). Booker became a Fellow of Christ's College in 1935, where he studied radio wave propagation. He later took a leave of absence to continue this research as a Visiting Scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.

During World War II, Booker conducted theoretical research for the Royal Air Force that led to developments in the understanding of antennas and radio wave propagation. After the war he returned to Christ's College to teach until 1948 when he became a professor of electrical engineering and engineering physics at Cornell University. After serving as director of Cornell's School of Electrical Engineering and associate director of the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, he moved on to the University of California, San Diego to start the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1965. He became emeritus professor of applied physics in 1978 and died in 1988.

His research throughout his years at UCSD was concerned with electromagnetism, cold plasma waves, and radio waves. Booker had a great interest in the quality of both undergraduate teaching of physics and in the graduate curriculum. He also advised many graduate students. He was equally active in his own theoretical research, receiving grants from the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Among his many honors, Booker was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1954 and made a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1960. In 1978 the Union of Radio Science elected Booker honorary president. He was named an honorary professor at Wuhan University in China in 1981. Booker authored four books: AN APPROACH TO ELECTRICAL SCIENCE (1959), A VECTOR APPROACH TO OSCILLATIONS (1965), ENERGY IN ELECTROMAGNETISM (1982), and COLD PLASMA WAVES (1984, also translated into Chinese).