Dr. Harry A.
Owen
1997 Distinguished Service Award
Recipient
Harry A. Owen, Jr., (S 46 - A 49 - SM 64 - LSM 84 - LF 93) was born in Hawthorn, Florida, September 22, 1919. He received the B.E.E. ('48) and M.S.E. ('52) degrees from the University of Florida and the Ph.D. degree ('63) from North Carolina State University.
During World War II he served in the U. S. Navy teaching radar electronics, and helped write an instruction manual, Fundamentals of Radar. From 1948 to 1951 he was Instructor and Assistant in Research in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Florida. From 1951 to 1986 he taught and did research in the Electrical Engineering Department at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, serving as Chairman of the Department from 1968 to 1974. Retiring in 1986, he is now Professor Emeritus.
Industrial experience includes summers with Westinghouse and Wright Machinery Company, a division of Sperry-Rand Corporation. In 1958 he received a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellowship for graduate study at North Carolina State University. From 1967 to 1968 he held a NASA Senior Postdoctoral Research Associateship at Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. He was an ESA Senior Research Fellow from 1975 to 1976 at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in The Netherlands.
Professor Owen is the author of more than 50 technical papers in communication systems, power electronics and magnetics. He has been actively involved in the Power Electronics Society and its predecessor, the Power Electronics Council. He has served on a variety of Society committees, including the Administrative Committee, and has chaired the Awards and Publications Committees. He has edited the Society Newsletter since its first issue in 1989.
The Distinguished Service Award is to honor long and distinguished service to the welfare of the Power Electronics Society at an exceptional level of dedication and achievement. The prize consists of a cash award of $1,200 and an engraved plaque to be presented at the PELS Awards Banquet customarily held at the annual Power Electronics Specialists Conference. All members of the Power Electronics Society are eligible. The basis for judging candidates for the award includes outstanding contributions over a substantial time period encompassing creative and invigorating leadership of the Society, exceptional administrative and managerial accomplishments on behalf of the Society, identification of new technologies within the scope of the Society and nurturing activities to support these emerging technologies, initiation of innovative programs to encourage wider participation in the full spectrum of Society activities, and the general communication and advocacy of power electronics technology to the technical community as a whole.
Source: Flyer from Award Presentation