Paul Coleman

Biography

Paul D. Coleman (IRE Associate, 1945 and Member 1955) was born in Stoystown, Pennsylvania, on 4 June 1918. He received the B.A. degree from Susquehanna University in Selingsgrove, Pennsylvania, in 1940, the M.S. degree in physics from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in 1942, and the Ph.D. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1951.

Coleman was a Physicist with the U.S. Signal Corps, Dayton, Ohio, and subsequently with the U.S. Air Force at Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, from 1942 to 1946. During this period, he worked on electromagnetic theory, and received the AAF Meritorious Civilian Award, in 1946, for his contributions to aircraft antenna theory. From 1946 to 1951, he was a Physicist with the U.S. Air Force Cambridge Air Research Center in Bedford, Massachusetts, and later a Research Associate in Physics at the Research Laboratory of Electronics, M.I.T. where he was concerned with the generation of submillimeter waves.

In 1951, Coleman became an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he established the Ultramicrowave Group in the Electrical Engineering Research Laboratory. In 1962, he was a Professor on the graduate electrical engineering staff, teaching and directing research on submillimeter was generation, detection, and propagation.

In 1962, Coleman was the Chairman of the Board of Technological Counselors of FXR, Inc., in Woodside, New York. He was a member of the IRE, Sigma Xi, the American Physical Society, and Pi Mu Epsilon.