Dr. Richard G.
Hoft
1977 William E. Newell Power
Electronics Award Recipient
The committee's choice for the 1977 award, Dr. Richard G. Hoft, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, is well-known and respected in all selection areas and was confirmed as one who best represents the criterion for this award.Born and first educated in Wall Lake, Iowa, Dr. Hoft received his BSEE at Iowa State University in 1948, and his MEE at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1954, while working in industry for 15 years. He later returned to Iowa State for his PhD in 1965, after which he remained in the academic field. While in industry, employed by General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, Dr. Hoft progressed from test engineer and development engineer to serve as Manager in the Corporate R&D Center for his final eight years with General Electric. For the past nine years he has served as Professor of Electrical Engineering and has been active in research and consulting with industry in both automatic controls and power electronics.
Dr. Hoft has published and presented more than 50 technical articles and papers at meetings of the Industry Applications Society, Magnetics Society, Power Engineering Society, and the International Federation of Automatic Control.
He presently serves on both the IAS Static Power Committee and the IAS Energy Committee. He has served on several PESC Technical Program Committees, and, typically, he again served as a Session Chairman and a Technical Panel specialist at the 1977 PESC. He was the Technical Program Chairman for the 1977 International Semiconductor Power Converter Conference in Orlando, Florida, in March, 1977.
Dr. Hoft has held many responsible positions in chapters of the National Society of Professional Engineers. He has been President of the Schenectady chapter of the New York NSPE, President of the Central Missouri chapter of the NSPE, and Chairman of the Professional Engineer in Industry Division of NSPE, and he is presently a Missouri State Director of the NSPE.
In the publications area, Dr. Hoft was Editor of the SCR Manual, published by the International Rectifier Company, and co-author of a book, Principles of Inverter Circuits, published by the John Wiley Company in 1964 which was later translated and published in a Japanese version in 1968.
Dr. Hoft is now Project Director for the Solid State Power Control Program at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He has been or is presently a consultant to G.E., IBM, Gould, Emerson, and MARTA, while concurrently conducting major research in Variable Frequency AC Motor Drives for Electric Transportation.
The 1977 Power Electronics Specialists Conference salutes Dr. Richard G. Hoft as the first recipient of the William E. Newell Power Electronics Award.
Source: IEEE Power Electronics Specialist Conference - 1977 Record