Name Boyd Bartlett Role Physicist | Died 1965 | |
Education | ||
Boyd Wheeler Bartlett (1897 – 1965) was an American military officer, professor, school administrator, and physicist.
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Education
Bartlett graduated from Bowdoin College in 1917. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1919 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. With the reductions in the military ranks in progress in the years following World War I, many officers resigned their commissions during those years, as did Bartlett in 1922. He was granted a doctorate from Columbia University in 1933. He did postgraduate studies and research with Arnold Sommerfeld at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich from 1934 to 1935. While in Munich, he co-authored two papers with Sommerfeld on theoretical electromagnetism.
Career
After Bartlett returned from Europe, he began a teaching career in physics at Bowdoin College as Professor of Physics. When World War II started, he was called up as a Colonel and assigned to the United States Military Academy. The head of the Physics Department there, Gerald Counts, was reassigned to Europe, and Bartlett stepped in as acting head of the Department. When Counts returned after the war, Bartlett served as deputy head of the Department, later, through a number of reorganizations and departmental name changes, he became head of the Department of Electricity, predecessor to the Department of Electrical Engineering. He retained this position until his retirement and promotion to Brigadier General in 1958.
Since 1952 at the U. S. Military Academy, an award for excellence in electrical engineering has been a tradition. In 1981, it was named the Brigadier General Boyd Wheeler Bartlett, USA Honor Award.