William Gould Dow Distinguished Lectureship
Recipients of the William Gould
Dow Distinguished Lectureship
The William Gould Dow Distinguished Lectureship is the highest external honor
bestowed by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The
Lectureship was established by donations from students and friends of William
Gould Dow, and recognizes the accomplishments of external individuals who have
made outstanding contributions in the field of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science.
Recipients are selected by the department on the basis of lifetime
achievements, groundbreaking contributions to their fields, and sustained
research excellence. They offer a lecture to the campus community, and meet with
EECS faculty during their visit. In addition, they receive a $5,000 honorarium.
William Gould Dow (1895 - 1999)
William Gould Dow stated, "My greatest contributions to the U-M have been in the
promotion and organization of sponsored research funding ... as a means of
providing research to support graduate students getting their PhDs." These
accomplishments represent the heart and purpose behind Professor Dow's work, and
have proven to be the cornerstones of what makes the EECS Department great.
During Bill Dow's 38 active years at the
University of Michigan, first as an instructor (1926), through to Professor
(1945), and finally Chair (1957-64), he was largely or solely responsible for
creating and organizing at least 13 laboratories and research units, including
the Solid-State Electronics Laboratory, the Environmental Research Institute of
Michigan (ERIM), the Willow Run Laboratories, the Space Physics Research
Laboratory, the Cooley Electronics Laboratory, and DRDA (Division of Research
Development and Administration).
Professor Dow was a pioneer in electronic
engineering education. He introduced into the curriculum vacuum tube and nuclear
theories, and the use of solid-state devices and computers. He wrote a classic
textbook on electronics, Fundamentals of Engineering Electronics, 1937,
which remained a standard for many years. During the mid 1950's, he was active
in establishing the Nuclear Engineering Department, and in incorporating
instruction in computer engineering into the electrical engineering curriculum.
He worked during his entire career, for more than
60 years, to make graduate education in this country the most advanced in the
western world, based on pure and applied research. He insisted that in defense
and advanced technologies, the United States should be second to none.
Through the establishment of the William Gould
Dow Distinguished Lectureship, we salute the myriad accomplishments of Prof.
Dow, remember his devotion to education, to research, and to his students and
colleagues, and bring to the U-M community some of the brightest minds in
engineering today.
Tributes to William Gould Dow on the
Occasion of his 100th Birthday
"William G. Dow
Celebrates Life," a Tribute on the Occasion of his 100th Birthday
"Nearly 100 and Still on the Go," by Dawn Wondero and
Benjamin C. ZumBrunnen [Michigan Professional Engineer, pp. 12-13, May/June
1995]
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