• Images
• Videos
• Documents
• Books
• Articles

Professional biography

Stratton was appointed Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering Department at MIT after his PhD. In 1930 his appointment was transferred to the Physics Department. He was promoted to Professor in 1941. He was one of the first staff members of the MIT Radiation Laboratory who joined the Laboratory in 1940.³

He published the classic book Electromagnetic Theory as part of the McGraw Hill series in Pure and Applied Physics in 1941. Stratton's book was one of the most influential electromagnetic textbooks which had formed an integral part of the graduate electromagnetic educations of both physics and electrical engineering communities since its publication.⁴ John David Jackson described Stratton's book as his bible⁵ and said that he used Stratton's book to learn advanced electromagnetism.⁶ Stratton's book was also described by Julian Schwinger as one of the essential electromagnetic textbooks.⁷ In 2007 Stratton's book had been reissued by the IEEE as one of its classic reissues in the collection of The IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Wave Theory.⁸ Stratton's book was one of the most requested classic electromagnetic textbook for reissuing in electrical engineering community. According to Donald G. Dudley then series editor of The IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Wave Theory, over twelve years before reissued publication of textbook in 2007, he had received many requests worldwide to reissue Stratton's book.⁹

Stratton was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946.¹⁰ In the same year he was awarded the Medal for Merit for his services.¹¹ He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1950 and the American Philosophical Society in 1956.¹²¹³ He served as the president of MIT between 1959 and 1966, after serving the university in several lesser posts, notably appointments to provost in 1949, vice president in 1951, and chancellor in 1956.

In the 1955–1965 he served as member of Board of Trustees, RAND Corporation.¹⁴ He also served as the chairman of the Ford Foundation between 1964 and 1971.

In 1967, Stratton was seconded to chair a Congressionally established "Commission on Marine Sciences, Engineering and Resources" whose work culminated in a report, "Our Nation and the Sea", published in 1969, that had a major influence on ocean sciences and management in the United States and abroad. The commission itself became commonly referred to as the Stratton Commission.

Stratton was also a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering.¹⁵

Stratton collected his speeches in a 1966 book titled Science and the Educated Man: Selected Speeches of Julius A. Stratton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966), with a foreword by the historian of technology Elting E. Morison who had been on the faculty of MIT as a professor of humanities in the Sloan School of Industrial Management from 1946 to 1966.¹⁶

MIT's Julius Adams Stratton Student Center at 84 Massachusetts Avenue is named in his honor.

Publications

Books

• Stratton JA, Electromagnetic Theory, Wiley-IEEE, 2007.¹⁷
• Stratton JA, Morse PM, Chu LJ, Hunter RA, Elliptic Cylinder and Spheroidal Wave Functions: Including Tables of Separation Constants and Coefficients, Wiley-MIT, 1941.
• Stratton JA, Morse PM, Chu LJ, Little JDC, Corbató FJ, Spheroidal Wave Functions: Including Tables of Separation Constants and Coefficients, MIT, 1956.

Articles

• Stratton, J. A. (1926). "A High Frequency Bridge". Journal of the Optical Society of America. 13 (4): 471. Bibcode:1926JOSA...13..471S. doi:10.1364/JOSA.13.000471.
• ——; Houghton, H. G. (1931). "A Theoretical Investigation of the Transmission of Light through Fog". Physical Review. 38 (1): 159–165. Bibcode:1931PhRv...38..159S. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.38.159.
• —— (1935). "Spheroidal Functions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 21 (1): 51–56. Bibcode:1935PNAS...21...51S. doi:10.1073/pnas.21.1.51. PMC 1076527. PMID 16577657.
• —— (1935). "Spheroidal Functions of the Second Kind". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 21 (6): 316–321. Bibcode:1935PNAS...21..316S. doi:10.1073/pnas.21.6.316. PMC 1076595. PMID 16587971.
• ——; Chu, L. J. (1939). "Diffraction Theory of Electromagnetic Waves". Physical Review. 56 (1): 99–107. Bibcode:1939PhRv...56...99S. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.56.99.
• ——; Chu, L. J. (1941). "Steady-State Solutions of Electromagnetic Field Problems. I. Forced Oscillations of a Cylindrical Conductor". Journal of Applied Physics. 12 (3): 230–235. Bibcode:1941JAP....12..230S. doi:10.1063/1.1712899.
• ——; Chu, L. J. (1941). "Steady-State Solutions of Electromagnetic Field Problems. II. Forced Oscillations of a Conducting Sphere". Journal of Applied Physics. 12 (3): 236–240. Bibcode:1941JAP....12..236S. doi:10.1063/1.1712900.
• —— (1956). "Science and the educated man". Physics Today. 9 (4): 17–20. Bibcode:1956PhT.....9d..17S. doi:10.1063/1.3059932.
• —— (1965). "Advice to a New Academy". Science. 149 (3689): 1206–1208. Bibcode:1965Sci...149.1206S. doi:10.1126/science.149.3689.1206. PMID 17747445.

Other books

• Stratton JA, Science and the Educated Man: Selected Speeches of Julius A. Stratton, MIT, 1966.
• Stratton JA, Mannix LH, Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT, MIT, 2005.

See also

• List of textbooks in electromagnetism

Notes

Sources

• Johnson, Howard W. (March 1996). "Julius Adams Stratton (18 May 1901–22 June 1994)". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 140 (1): 116–121. JSTOR 987282.

External links

• IEEE History Center – IEEE minibio of Julius Stratton
• Full text of the final Stratton Commission report, "Our Nation and the Sea"
• Julius Adams Stratton at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

References

1. "President Emeritus Julius Adams Stratton dies at 93". 29 June 1994. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1994/stratton-0629.html ↩

2. Stratton, Julius Adams (1928). Streuungskoeffizient von Wasserstoff nach der Wellenmechanik [Scattering coefficient of hydrogen in wave mechanics] (Ph.D.). Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. OCLC 720868304. ProQuest 301803695. https://www.proquest.com/docview/301803695/ ↩

3. Gray, P. E. (1 January 1995). "Julius Adams Stratton [Obituary]". Physics Today. 48 (1): 67–68. doi:10.1063/1.2807887. ISSN 0031-9228. Retrieved 3 January 2024. /wiki/Paul_E._Gray ↩

4. Stratton, J. A. (2007). Electromagnetic Theory. "Foreword to the Reissued Edition" by D. G. Dudley. Wiley-IEEE. p. v. doi:10.1002/9781119134640. ISBN 9781119134640. Retrieved February 9, 2024. 9781119134640 ↩

5. Jackson, J. D. (1999). "Snapshots of a Physicist's Life". Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. 49 (1): 1–33. Bibcode:1999ARNPS..49....1J. doi:10.1146/annurev.nucl.49.1.1. ISSN 0163-8998. Retrieved February 24, 2024. /wiki/John_David_Jackson_(physicist) ↩

6. Jackson, J. D. (2001). "Jackson's Electromagnetic Antecedents". American Journal of Physics. 69 (6): 631. Bibcode:2001AmJPh..69..631J. doi:10.1119/1.1286665. ISSN 0002-9505. Retrieved February 24, 2024. /wiki/John_David_Jackson_(physicist) ↩

7. Schwinger, J.; DeRaad, L. L.; Milton, K. A.; Tsai, W. Y. (2018). Classical Electrodynamics. Taylor & Francis. p. 561. doi:10.1201/9780429503542. ISBN 978-0-429-50354-2. Retrieved February 24, 2024. 978-0-429-50354-2 ↩

8. Dudley, D. G. (2006). "The IEEE Series on Electromagnetic Wave Theory". IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine. 48 (6): 126–127. doi:10.1109/MAP.2006.323368. ISSN 1558-4143. S2CID 40484203. Retrieved February 24, 2024. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4118002 ↩

9. Stratton, J. A. (2007). Electromagnetic Theory. "Foreword to the Reissued Edition" by D. G. Dudley. Wiley-IEEE. p. v. doi:10.1002/9781119134640. ISBN 9781119134640. Retrieved February 9, 2024. 9781119134640 ↩

10. "Julius Adams Stratton". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2023-01-10. https://www.amacad.org/person/julius-adams-stratton ↩

11. "President Emeritus Julius Adams Stratton dies at 93". MIT News. 29 June 1994. Retrieved 3 January 2024. https://news.mit.edu/1994/stratton-0629 ↩

12. "Julius A. Stratton". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2023-01-10. http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/deceased-members/50009.html ↩

13. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2023-01-10. https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Julius+Adams+Stratton&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced ↩

14. "Stratton, Julius Adams, 1901–1994". American Institute of Physics. Retrieved January 4, 2024. https://history.aip.org/phn/11604011.html ↩

15. "Founding members of the National Academy of Engineering". National Academy of Engineering. Retrieved October 21, 2012. http://www.nae.edu/About/leadership/57773.aspx ↩

16. Honan, William H., "Elting E. Morison, 85, Educator Who Wrote Military Biographies", The New York Times, April 26, 1995 /wiki/William_H._Honan ↩

17. Pages 464–470 of the book were written in collaboration with Lan Jen Chu. /wiki/Lan_Jen_Chu ↩