[Elecraft] Elecraft General Interest: SFGate: Robert Helliwell, radio science pioneer, dies

[Oliver Johns]

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--O. Johns W6ODJ

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> This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate.
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> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2011/05/23/BABK1JIVEQ.DTL
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> Monday, May 23, 2011 (SF Chronicle)
> Robert Helliwell, radio science pioneer, dies
> "mailto:dperlman at sfchronicle.com">David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
> 
> 
>   When Robert A. Helliwell, a Stanford electrical engineer, heard a
> mysterious series of high-pitched, drawn-out whistles coming from his
> laboratory's radio receiver more than 60 years ago, his curiosity led him
> to a pathbreaking series of experiments exploring Earth's magnetic field
> and the belt of energetic particles beyond it.
>   With great delight over the years, he regularly welcomed visitors to his
> lab to listen to what he called his "whistlers," the eerie electrical
> warbling generated by lightning flashes in Canada's Arctic and that had
> sped for thousands of miles through the ionosphere to Stanford.
>   Professor Helliwell, a distinguished radio science researcher, died May 3
> in Palo Alto of complications from dementia. He was 90.
>   During his research, Professor Helliwell once enlisted a powerful Navy
> transmitter to send signals from Annapolis, Md., to a Chilean listening
> post in a lighthouse at Cape Horn. It led him to discover that Earth's
> ionosphere was not 200 miles thick, as scientists had believed, but
> extended at least as high as 20,000 miles.
>   Continuing that research, Professor Helliwell sent radio transmitters into
> space aboard NASA satellites to explore the radio properties of the Van
> Allen Belt, where highly energetic electrons and protons trigger the
> aurora borealis, the brilliant northern lights.
>   In Antarctica, where the atmosphere was unsullied by radiation from urban
> power lines and radio noise, Professor Helliwell and his students
> installed a very low frequency transmitter at Siple Station, a research
> base 900 miles from the South Pole, and deployed an antenna array 13 miles
> long.
>   It sent radio signals to Canada and, because the Antarctic ice sheet is 1
> 1/2 miles thick, the antenna in effect was 1 1/2 miles high above Earth.
> Little of the very low frequency radio energy, therefore, was absorbed by
> the ground and the signal from Siple was able to follow Earth's magnetic
> field lines far out into space before returning to Earth in Roberval,
> Canada.
>   "It was like a lab experiment in space," recalled Donald Carpenter, an
> emeritus professor of electrical engineering at Stanford and one of
> Professor Helliwell's former students.
>   "He was always a very curious guy," Carpenter said, "and if you came to
> him with a question, he'd answer, but you'd come away with still more
> questions. He was a gold mine of insights into the behavior of the
> ionosphere and the magnetosphere, and the Van Allen radiation belts."
>   Professor Helliwell's radio frequency experiments at Siple Station were
> "his crowning achievements," Carpenter said.
>   The scientific world honored him for his work there, and in 1966 the
> government's Board of Geographic Names named a stretch of mountains along
> the coast of Antarctica's Victoria Land as the "Helliwell Hills."
>   Professor Helliwell was born in Red Wing, Minn., and joined the Stanford
> faculty in 1946 after earning all his university degrees there.
>   His high school sweetheart, Jean Perham, also graduated from Stanford. And
> when Professor Helliwell joined the fencing team as an undergraduate, she
> did too - going on to become the university's first female fencing coach.
> Mrs. Helliwell died in 2001.
>   Professor Helliwell is survived by his sons, Bradley of Sedona, Ariz.,
> David of Arcata (Humboldt County), and Richard of Colorado Springs; a
> daughter, Donna of Sunnyvale; four grandchildren; and one
> great-great-grandchild.
>   A memorial service will be held at the Stanford Memorial Church on June 7
> at 3 p.m. E-mail David Perlman at dperlman at sfchronicle.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Copyright 2011 SF Chronicle
>