Nationality United States Fields Electrical engineering Role Author | Name Parry Moon Institutions MIT | |
Born February 14, 1898
Beaver Dam, Wisconsin ( 1898-02-14 ) Alma mater University of Wisconsin
MIT Known for Contributions to electromagnetic field theory
Holors Notable awards 1974 Illuminating Engineering Society's Gold Medal Died March 4, 1988, Boston, Massachusetts, United States Education Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison Books Theory of Holors: A Generaliz, Foundations of electrodynamics, A Table of Planck's Function f, The photic field, The Abacus: Its History - It | ||
Parry Hiram Moon (; 1898–1988) was an American electrical engineer, who with Domina Eberle Spencer co-authored eight scientific books and over 200 papers on subjects including electromagnetic field theory, color harmony, nutrition, aesthetic measure, and advanced mathematics. He also developed a theory of holors.
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Biography
Parry Hiram Moon was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin to Ossian C. & Eleanor F. (Parry) Moon. He received a BSEE from University of Wisconsin in 1922 and an MSEE from MIT in 1924. Unfulfilled with his work in transformer design at Westinghouse, Moon obtained a position as research assistant at MIT under Vannevar Bush. He was hospitalized for six months after sustaining injuries from experimental work in the laboratory. He later continued his teaching and research as an associate professor in MIT's Electrical Engineering Department. He married Harriet Tiffany, with whom he had a son. In 1961, after the death of his first wife, he married his co-author, collaborator and former student, Domina Eberle Spencer, a professor of mathematics. They have one son. Moon retired from full-time teaching in the 1960s, but continued his research until his death in 1988.
Scientific contributions
Moon’s early career focused in optics applications for engineers. Collaborating with Domina Eberle Spencer, he began researching electromagnetism and Amperian forces. The quantity of papers that followed culminated in Foundations of Electrodynamics, unique for its physical insights, and two field theory books, which became standard references for many years. Much later, Moon and Spencer unified the approach to collections of data (vectors, tensors, etc.), with a concept they coined as “holors”. Through their work, they became disillusioned with Einsteinian relativity and sought neo-classical explanations for various phenomena.