An historical perspective of microwave propagation and antenna research [From the Historian]

My first contact with the IEEE was in 1947 when, at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, under the guidance of Professor Garfield A. Woonton, I became a student member. In my college senior year (1949), my seminar topic was broadly titled, "Radio Wave Propagation": ground-wave, ionospheric, tropospheric - all were included! I was soon to learn that it was overwhelming to encompass such a broad field in detail. I think some of the inspiration for this interest in propagation came through J.A. Ratcliffe, whom I met briefly in England during the early (1941) radar years. He recently finished his days at Cambridge University.