In memoriam

Harold A. Peterson (12K JPG)

Harold A. Peterson

Electrical and Computer Engineering Emeritus Professor Harold A. Peterson, age 92, a resident of Green Valley, Arizona, since the mid 1970s, died Tuesday, May 6, 2001. He had been a patient at La Posada Healthcare as his Parkinson's disease advanced.

Born on a farm outside of Essex, Iowa, on Dec. 26, 1906, he grew up as the youngest of one of three brothers and six sisters. An early interest in crystal sets led him eventually to the program in electrical engineering at the University of Iowa. There he met and married Marion Pray of Lake City, Iowa, and graduated in the early 1930s with bachelor's and master's degrees.

His work toward a PhD was preempted by a job offer from the General Electric Company. He and Marion moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and then to Schenectady, New York, where he worked for GE on a variety of matters pertaining to power generation and transmission.

He contributed to the Manhattan Project, in one instance flying secretly to the West Coast and back in leap frog-like stages aboard a DC-3. He also used leading-edge technology to obtain numerical solutions to some of his differential equations, namely a primitive form of computer called the mechanical differential analyzer. It involved a collection of rotating rods ingeniously interconnected by gears of various dimensions, along with disks and rubber wheels.

In 1946 he moved his family — now including daughter Joye and sons David and Gilbert — to Madison where he joined the electrical engineering faculty of the University of Wisconsin. Within a year he was appointed chairman of the department, a position he held for the ensuing 20 years.

During his tenure, the size of the department grew along with its national and international stature. One of his most audacious projects, undertaken late in his career, was a study of the feasibility of building a superconducting magnet about the size of a major football stadium in which to temporarily store electrical energy. The idea was to store energy there during off-peak hours, and to draw it out during times of peak demand.

He was a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Many years after his retirement in 1973, his department devised and conferred up on him its Centennial Medal, an honor unique in recognizing his service and leadership.

Professor Peterson's work took him to universities, industrial sites, and laboratories throughout the northern hemisphere, and his students and colleagues were correspondingly diverse. He was active in Rotary, and enjoyed locating and attending their meetings in whatever corner of the world he could.

He had a fine tenor voice and enjoyed singing with various groups. His rendition of "I Wonder as I Wander" was especially evocative. He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Marion; and by their two sons, David of Pittsboro, North Carolina, and Gilbert of Madison, Wisconsin. His grandsons, Eric and Karl Peterson, live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and New York City. His great grandson, Casper Joyce Hadak Peterson, lives in Basel, Switzerland. Their daughter, Joye, passed away in 1957.

Memorials may be made to La Posada Healthcare in Green Valley, Odyssey Hospice in Tucson, or to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Wayne Bradley Swift

Wayne Bradley Swift, 73, a senior systems engineer with Advanced Communications Systems, died Jan. 15 at Sibley Memorial Hospital. He had cancer and had broken his leg Jan. 7 in a fall in New York. He died of complications after surgery on the leg.

Since moving to the Washington area in 1965, Dr. Swift had worked in computer service-related positions. Since 1996, he had been with Advanced Communications Systems, a division of Titan industries. He also had worked 10 years for Computer Sciences Corp. and for other firms.

Swift's passion and avocation were the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was a member of the Washington scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars and the Red Circle of Washington.

Dr. Swift, a resident of Chevy Chase, was born in Lincoln, Neb., and served in the Navy during World War ll. He graduated from the University of Nebraska and earned doctorate in electrical engineering from UW-Madison in 1955, where he taught for 10 years.

Swift is survived by his wife, Francine Morris Swift of Chevy Chase, and two sisters.