Bode, Hendrik Wade

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Weapons and armour

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b. 24 December 1905 Madison, Wisconsin, USA

d. 21 June 1982 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

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American engineer who developed an extensive theoretical understanding of the behaviour of electronic circuits.

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Bode received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Ohio State University in 1924 and 1926, respectively, and his PhD from Columbia University, New York, in 1935. In 1926 he joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he made many theoretical contributions to the understanding of the behaviour of electronic circuits and, in particular, in conjunction with Harry Nyquist, of the conditions under which amplifier circuits become unstable.

During the Second World War he worked on the design of gun control systems and afterwards was a member of a team that worked with Douglas Aircraft to develop the Nike anti-aircraft missile. A member of the Bell Laboratories Mathematical Research Group from 1929, he became its Director in 1952, and then Director of Physical Sciences. Finally he became Vice-President of the Laboratories, with responsibility for systems engineering, and a director of Bellcomm, a Bell company involved in the Moon-landing programme. When he retired from Bell in 1967, he became Professor of Systems Engineering at Harvard University.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Presidential Certificate of Merit 1946. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Edison Medal 1969.

Bibliography

1940, "Relation between attenuation and phase in feedback amplifier design", Bell System Technical Journal 19:421.

1945, Network Analysis and Feedback Amplifier Design, New York: Van Nostrand.

1950, with C.E.Shannon, "A simplified derivation of linear least squares smoothing and prediction theory", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 38:417.

1961, "Feedback. The history of an idea", Proceedings of the Symposium on Active Networks and Feedback Systems, Brooklyn Polytechnic.

1971, Synergy: Technical Integration and Technical Innovation in the Bell System Bell Laboratories, Bell Telephone Laboratories (provides background on his activities at Bell).

Further Reading

P.C.Mahon, 1975, Mission Communications, Bell Telephone Laboratories. See also Black, Harold Stephen; Shannon, Claude Elwood.

KF