How a Scottish academic in 1873 set the stage for today’s global communications

Mr. Rob Rowlands
Volunteer Faculty Engineering Department, SSU

Cerent Engineering Science Complex, Salazar Hall 2009A
3:00 PM

Abstract: Hard as it is to believe today, the connection between electricity and magnetism was not made until early in the 19th Century. James Clerk Maxwell brought together field theories from Gauss, Ampere and Faraday into a unified set of equations. At the publication of his “Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism” 1873, radio had not yet been demonstrated and the electromagnetic properties of light were not understood. Today these equations are the basis of our modern world allowing us to carry powerful communications tools in our pocket or place a telescope in space a million miles away. The talk is a review of some of the miracles that followed from the math, though understanding the vector math is not required (119 words).

Bio: Rob received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1971. He was a Transmission Engineer in the NZ Post Office for 22 years, followed by 21 years with HP and Agilent in the SF Bay Area in Business Development and sales of communications test equipment. Since 2017 he has been a volunteer lecturer teaching a popular RF Test Laboratory class at Sonoma State University. He is semi-retired but still selling test equipment for Gap Wireless. Rob is a life member of IEEE