Julian J. Bussgang

Childhood and high school

Bussgang was born in Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) on March 26, 1925. His father, Jozef Bussgang, was a businessman. Bussgang and his family faced relatively little anti-Semitism in Poland until Hitler’s influence began being felt in Poland. Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939. When the German army started advancing, the Bussgang family decided to leave the country. They had heard of Nazi treatment of Jews and were afraid what would happen to them under German rule. Two weeks after World War II started, Bussgang and his family left their home in Lwow and started travelling south towards Romania with Bussgang's uncle and aunt in their car. Bussgang's uncle and aunt had visas to Romania, so they crossed the Romanian border earlier, but the border guard would not allow Bussgang and his family to cross since they did not have visas, until Julian's father gave the guard a bribe.

Upon entering Romania, Bussgang's family went to a hotel in Bucharest and lived there for several months, cooking their meals on a hot plate. Once the family got oriented in Romania, Bussgang and his sister each enrolled in a French high school. Later, he moved to a Polish high school which was started by Polish refugees in the city. Since it became clear that Romania was no longer safe for Jews, Bussgang's parents started looking for a safer country. His uncle and aunt had already gone to Portugal and from there to Cuba and eventually the United States. However, Bussgang's family was not able to get a US visa due to the quota system then in place.

Bussgang's parents tried to get a visa for Palestine. During this time period, Palestine was under a British mandate and was attracting many Jews escaping from Hitler. Getting a visa was difficult. However, the Bussgangs succeeded in obtaining a capitalist visa and were able to go to Palestine. They arrived at the port of Haifa in March 1940.

After France's collapse in June 1940, the Polish government in exile went to England and many Polish refugees were evacuated by the British from Romania to Palestine. Thus, a temporary Polish school in Tel Aviv, where Bussgang completed his secondary education. He graduated from the school when he was 17 and spent the next few months studying English to pass the Cambridge University Proficiency in English (CPE) exam. He then took the University of London written Matriculation Examination, which qualified him to enter the university. However, he was more inclined towards fighting in the war than completing his education.

Army service and later education

At age 18 Bussgang volunteered to become a soldier and joined the Polish Second Corps commonly known as the Anders' Army after its commander Polish General Władysław Anders. The Polish Second Corps became a part of the British Eighth Army, which was given the mission to invade Italy. Bussgang first trained with tanks and then went through an accelerated officers school for artillery and became a cadet-officer.

Bussgang fought in and survived the Battle of Monte Cassino, a bloody battle that cost the lives of 55,000 Allied soldiers. He continued to fight in battles at Ancona and Bologna. When the war ended in 1945, he was assigned to the British Contingent Operating in a Transit Camp in Forlì, Italy, because he was one of the few Polish soldiers who could speak English. He oversaw the transports of many former prisoners back to their European home countries.

When the war in Italy ended, General Anders arranged for the qualified Polish soldiers to enter Italian universities and make up for the time they had lost while fighting during the war. Thus, Bussgang enrolled at the Polytechnic University of Turin and completed the first year of engineering in an accelerated course.

During the negotiations to define the new Polish borders after the war, the Allies announced that eastern Poland, where Lwów was located, would be annexed into the Soviet Union. Bussgang did not want to return to Lwów, because he had heard of terrible Russian labor camps, called gulags, where many Poles had been deported during the war.

When the Allies wanted Italy to return to normalcy, they decided to move the Polish soldiers out of Italy. They gave them the choice of either going back to Poland or to England. Bussgang decided to go to England, where he entered Polish University College, a temporary school created in order to qualify its students to take University of London exams. In 1949, Bussgang received his US visa after waiting several years. Later that year, he completed his B.Sc.(Eng.) from the University of London, taking his final exam in New York.

Career

Bussgang immigrated to the United States in 1949. He went to MIT and received his MSEE in 1951. His thesis was the Bussgang theorem first published as an RLE Report. After his graduation, he began working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Later, alongside his work at Lincoln Laboratory, he enrolled at Harvard for a PhD in Applied Physics, which he received in 1955. After he graduated, he joined the RCA Aerospace Division in Waltham, MA (later in Burlington, MA). He started as an engineer but then was promoted first as Group Leader, then as Manager of Radar Development, and later became Manager of Applied Research.

In 1962, Bussgang left RCA and founded Signatron Inc., an electronics firm located in Lexington. When he started thinking about founding Signatron in 1962, he started teaching at Northeastern University and continued until 1965. He also taught a course at Harvard from 1964 to 1965. He moved to Lexington and there raised his family and was active in town government, serving as a Town Meeting member from 1975 to 1993. Signatron developed high data rate, troposcatter (over the horizon) modems, HF modems and radio channel simulators. After leaving RCA, Bussgang worked as a consultant and was involved with the Apollo program. He was a consultant to Grumman Aircraft in the selection, simulation, and evaluation of Rendezvous Radar and Landing Radar for LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) for man's first trip to the moon. In 1984, he sold Signatron to the aerospace firm Sundstrand Corporation but was asked to stay with the company for three more years, so he retired in 1987.

During his career, he also served as a consultant to Honeywell, Hughes Aircraft, Philco-Ford, IBM, Arthur D. Little, Raytheon Company, RCA, and Sperry Univac among others. After retirement, Bussgang volunteered twice in Warsaw and once in Krakow with International Executive Service Corps to help privatize Polish industrial firms. In May 2014, he was promoted to the rank of Captain (inactive) in the Polish Army. In 2011, President Komorowski presented Bussgang with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland at the Polish Consulate in New York City, for his activities promoting Polish-Jewish dialogue.

Bussgang served as Associate Editor of Radio Science, from 1976 to 1978, and was a member of the Board of Overseers of the Museum of Science in Boston, from 1989 to 1995. He was a USA member of Commission C of URSI. He is listed in Who's Who in America, Leaders in Electronics, and American Men of Science.

IEEE

Bussgang has been active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – IEEE – [formerly IRE] since 1952. He served on the IEEE Life Members Committee and as a reviewer on various IEEE Transactions. He served on the Boston Section's Fellows and Awards Committee and was also the Education Chair. In 1989, he became Chair of the Boston Section of IEEE. He served in these positions until 1993. From 1995-2007, he was the Boston Section representative to the Central New England Council of IEEE. He was twice elected to three-year terms on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society. He was the nominator for the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Milestone and was given the regional professional leadership award by IEEE in 1995.

Books and papers

Bussgang has written over twenty scientific papers and prepared two books that have not yet been published. One is a monograph with David Middleton on Truncated Sequential Tests, the other is Signal Detection and Estimation; Problems and Solutions with Nicolas Johnson. In 1994, his own story – Haunting Memories – was published as a chapter in We Shall Not Forget! Memories of the Holocaust. With his wife, Fay, he translated from Polish to English two volumes of The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak – in 1998 and in 2005. These books, originally published by the Association of the Children of the Holocaust in Poland, contain testimonies by different authors highlighting experiences during World War II. In 2010, he translated from Polish to English the book, Polish Jew-Polish Soldier: 1939–1945, a collection of essays first published in the UK in 1945 by a Jewish chaplain of the Polish Army 2nd Corps.

Bussgang and his wife were the founders and for over twenty years, editors of Gazeta, a quarterly publication of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies, now published by the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture.

Awards and honors

Patents