Emory Leon Chaffee

Emory Leon Chaffee was born on April 15, 1885 in Somerville, Mass. He died March 8, 1975 in Waltham, Mass. Chaffee earned his Ph.D. in Physics in 1911 from Harvard University. His dissertation established the "Chaffee gap", a method for producing continuous oscillations for long distance wireless radiotelephone communications. Other important research focussed on vacuum tubes, optics, and radio. He patented a number of radio devices including the Chaffee gap. In 1924, he experimented with weather control, using airplanes to seed clouds with electrically charged grains of sand. During World War II he directed research related to radar.

He taught at Harvard from 1911–1953. He served as director of the Cruft Laboratory from 1940, co-director of the Lyman Laboratory of Physics (1947–1953), and director of the Laboratories of Engineering, Science, and Applied Physics (1948–1953).

An oral history interview with Chaffee conducted by Frederick Vinton Hunt is available at the American Institute of Physics, online here.

The picture shown here of the younger Chaffee was also taken from the IEEE website. See here.