Retrospective: His colleagues remember `The Doctor': Alfred N. Goldsmith, cofounder of IRE and Director and Editor Emeritus of IEEE, is cited for his wisdom and statesmanship

We who were his students at Townsend Harris. Hall and the College of the City of New York always referred to him as "the Doctor," in distinction from run-of-the-mill Ph.D.s on the faculty. Some of us were wireless amateurs (not "hams," please) and he was our special benefactor not only as a teacher but as a generous donor of equipment to the City College Radio Club, founded in 1914 but hardly a going concern until the following year. By that time we were fairly experienced: another boy of 12 and I had a primitive station in the Bronx in 1908 (wavelength unknown, range about four blocks, call letters "YF," which in American Morse had a beautiful lilt.)