- Kennelly, Arthur Edwin
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[br]b. 17 December 1871 Colaba, Bombay, Indiad. 18 June 1939 Boston, Massachusetts, USA[br]Anglo-American electrical engineer who predicted the ionosphere and developed mathematical analysis for electronic circuits.[br]As a young man, Kennelly worked as office boy for a London engineering society, as an electrician and on a cable-laying ship. In 1887 he went to work for Thomas Edison at West Orange, New Jersey, USA, becoming his chief assistant. In 1894, with Edwin J.Houston, he formed the Philadelphia company of Houston and Kennelly, but eight years later he took up the Chair of Electrical Engineering at Harvard, a post he held until his retirement in 1930. In 1902 he noticed that the radio signals received by Marconi in Nova Scotia from the transmitter in England were stronger than predicted and postulated a reflecting ionized layer in the upper atmosphere. Almost simultaneously the same prediction was made in England by Heaviside, so the layer became known as the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. Throughout most of his working life Kennelly was concerned with the application of mathematical techniques, particularly the use of complex theory, to the analysis of electrical circuits. With others he also contributed to an understanding of the high-frequency skin-effect in conductors.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, American Institute of Electrical Engineers 1898–1900. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1916. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1932; Edison Medal 1933.Bibliography1915, with F.A.Laws \& P.H.Pierce "Experimental research on the skin effect in conductors", Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 34:1,953.1924, Hyperbolic Functions as Applied to Electrical Engineering.1924, Check Atlas of Complex Hyperbolic \& Circular Functions (both on mathematics for circuit analysis).Further ReadingK.Davies, 1990, Ionospheric Radio, London: Peter Peregrinus. See also Appleton, Sir Edward Victor.KF
Biographical history of technology. - Taylor & Francis e-Librar. Lance Day and Ian McNeil. 2005.
