M. E. Van Valkenburg

MAC ELWYN VAN VALKENBURG, former W.W. Grainger Professor Emeritus of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Dean Emeritus of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, died on March 19, 1997, at the age of 75. He was elected to NAE in 1973. Mac was born on October 5, 1921, in Union, Utah, the son of Charles M. and Nora Louise Walker Van Valkenburg. In grade school, Mac was inspired by a neighbor boy who had figured out how to use a one-tube, battery-powered radio to amplify sound from a hand-cranked phonograph. Before he was a teenager, Mac and a close friend, Vance Burgon, were making crystal radio receivers from copper coils wrapped around oatmeal boxes and crystals of galena found in nearby copper deposits. The two became amateur radio operators, and their walls were plastered with QSL (one of the Q codes used in radiocommunication and radio broadcasting) cards, postcards from other ham radio operators verifying that their signal had been received. Soon the boys were scripting a radio program based on information from ham radio magazines and their own experiences. The program aired late Saturday night on radio station KSL in Salt Lake City. After graduating from Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah, Mac enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the University of Utah, where he earned his B.S. in 1943. On August 27 of …