Dow, William G. (William Gould), 1895-1999

Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan.

William Gould Dow was a member of the faculty of the University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering from 1926 to 1964. He served as chairman of the department from 1958 until 1964. While at the University of Michigan, Dow was instrumental in establishing the University's Willow Run Research Laboratories and initiated several research programs in the Electrical Engineering Department, including the Plasma Engineering Laboratory and the Space Physics Research Laboratory. He helped found the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM), and served on its board of directors until 1990. He was extremely active as a member of several professional societies, including the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) and the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE). In addition to his teaching and administrative activities, Dow conducted significant basic and applied research in the areas of high-frequency power welding, vacuum tube development, gas discharge plasma, microwave electron tubes, use of rockets and satellites in investigations of the upper atmosphere, missile guidance systems, and military electronics.

Dow was born September 30, 1895 in Faribault, Minnesota. He received a BS degree from the University of Minnesota in 1916 and an electrical engineering degree in 1917. Between 1917 and 1926 Dow was employed with Westinghouse Electric Company, working in sales and product testing. Dow joined the University of Michigan's Electrical Engineering Department in 1926 as an instructor in electronics. He received his M.S.E. in 1929, and was made an assistant professor. Dow was promoted to associate professor in 1938 and to full professor in 1945. He served as chairman of the department from 1958 until 1964. In 1965 Dow retired, continuing to hold an appointment as professor emeritus until 1997.

From 1943 to 1945, Dow was on leave at the Radio Research Laboratory, Harvard University, conducting war-related research for the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development. He directed research in high-frequency radio transmission as a radar countermeasure. In that capacity, Dow spent three months in 1944-1945 in Britain, overseeing installation of radar jamming equipment and surveying British vacuum tube research laboratories for the Vacuum Tube Development Committee of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), of which he was a member.

During and after the war, Dow was involved in many industry and government-sponsored projects. Among the major projects were an investigation of a sheet metal welding technique for the Fisher Body Division of General Motors; consulting for the National Bureau of Standards (1945-1955) on problems relating to vacuum tubes; a variety of projects for the Signal Corps, Air Force, and Army Ordnance relating to microwave electron tubes, particularly magnetrons; and a number of investigations of management and personnel issues at military installations and research laboratories.

Dow served on the prestigious Rocket and Satellite Research Panel from 1946 until 1960; this group coordinated all military-supported programs toward determining the properties of the upper atmosphere. He was also a member of the Technical Panel on Rocketry of the International Geophysical Year (1956-1959). He was a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), and other professional organizations. In addition to numerous technical articles, Dow published Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, for many years a standard textbook in the field.

Dow held an appointment as Senior Research Geophysicist at the Space Physics Research Lab from 1966-1971. He was a charter member of the Board of Directors of the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, serving on the board from 1972 until 1990, and as a trustee emeritus until 1997. Later in life he worked on efforts to produce thermonuclear fusion, for which he received two patents in the 1980s. Dow continued to live in Ann Arbor until 1997, when he moved to Waco, Texas and Bellevue, Washington.