Oswald Garrison Villard Jr., a pioneer in the development of radar able to see over the horizon, died on Jan. 7 in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 87.
He died at a nursing home, said his daughter, Barbara Suzanne Villard of Tucson.
Dr. Villard, an electronics engineer, parlayed his youthful interest in radio into advanced research with military and other uses, including ''stealth'' technology to stop radar from bouncing back from aircraft, so planes are nearly invisible to it.
His greatest contribution was leading research that vastly expanded the range of high-frequency radar signals by bouncing them off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer about 50 miles above the earth's surface. The result was that radar could peer around the earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away.
Dr. Villard was a professor at Stanford University for five decades. In 1969, when Stanford ceased all classified work in response to antiwar protests, he moved his research group to Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif.
Among the many honors Dr. Villard received was the highest civilian award made by the Department of Defense, called the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
He was born Sept. 17, 1916, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., part of a distinguished family that included his great-grandfather William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, and his grandfather Henry Villard, the editor, publisher and financier. His father, Oswald Sr., took over as publisher of the family-owned magazine The Nation, but left when it abandoned its stance opposing the entry of the United States in World War II.
Oswald Jr. became interested in electricity as a boy after being given ''Harper's Electricity Book for Boys,'' which he kept for the rest of his life. When he was about 12, the family chauffeur gave him a radio put together from a kit, Dr. Villard said in an oral history prepared by Rutgers University.
He went to high school at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and then to Yale, where he founded a radio club. He entered Stanford as a graduate student in electrical engineering. As a student Dr. Villard worked with David Packard and William Hewett, among other electronics pioneers, to develop the klystron tube, the basis of radar.
In World War II at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard, Dr. Villard worked on pioneering studies of radar jamming.
He returned to Stanford after the war and in 1947 designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel, like a telephone conversation. He earned his doctorate from Stanford in 1949.
Dr. Villard wrote over 60 technical papers and held six patents.
His wife, the former Barbara Slater Letts, died in 1996. In addition to his daughter, Dr. Villard is survived by two sons, Thomas, of Menlo Park, and John, of Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; and three grandchildren.
In the 1980's, Dr. Villard designed an inconspicuous antenna that could wipe out signals that jammed communications, allowing people in many countries to receive Voice of America radio programs. The devices, which were small enough to be concealed in newspapers, were requested by many Chinese after the student uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Correction: February 13, 2004, Friday An obituary on Feb. 8 about Oswald Villard Jr., an electrical engineer who did early work on over-the-horizon radar, misstated the surname of an electronics pioneer with whom he worked as a student at Stanford. It was William Hewlett, not Hewett.
obituary at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E5DA1F3BF93BA35751C0A9629C8B63
He died at a nursing home, said his daughter, Barbara Suzanne Villard of Tucson.
Dr. Villard, an electronics engineer, parlayed his youthful interest in radio into advanced research with military and other uses, including ''stealth'' technology to stop radar from bouncing back from aircraft, so planes are nearly invisible to it.
His greatest contribution was leading research that vastly expanded the range of high-frequency radar signals by bouncing them off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer about 50 miles above the earth's surface. The result was that radar could peer around the earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away.
Dr. Villard was a professor at Stanford University for five decades. In 1969, when Stanford ceased all classified work in response to antiwar protests, he moved his research group to Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif.
Among the many honors Dr. Villard received was the highest civilian award made by the Department of Defense, called the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
He was born Sept. 17, 1916, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., part of a distinguished family that included his great-grandfather William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, and his grandfather Henry Villard, the editor, publisher and financier. His father, Oswald Sr., took over as publisher of the family-owned magazine The Nation, but left when it abandoned its stance opposing the entry of the United States in World War II.
Oswald Jr. became interested in electricity as a boy after being given ''Harper's Electricity Book for Boys,'' which he kept for the rest of his life. When he was about 12, the family chauffeur gave him a radio put together from a kit, Dr. Villard said in an oral history prepared by Rutgers University.
He went to high school at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and then to Yale, where he founded a radio club. He entered Stanford as a graduate student in electrical engineering. As a student Dr. Villard worked with David Packard and William Hewett, among other electronics pioneers, to develop the klystron tube, the basis of radar.
In World War II at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard, Dr. Villard worked on pioneering studies of radar jamming.
He returned to Stanford after the war and in 1947 designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel, like a telephone conversation. He earned his doctorate from Stanford in 1949.
Dr. Villard wrote over 60 technical papers and held six patents.
His wife, the former Barbara Slater Letts, died in 1996. In addition to his daughter, Dr. Villard is survived by two sons, Thomas, of Menlo Park, and John, of Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; and three grandchildren.
In the 1980's, Dr. Villard designed an inconspicuous antenna that could wipe out signals that jammed communications, allowing people in many countries to receive Voice of America radio programs. The devices, which were small enough to be concealed in newspapers, were requested by many Chinese after the student uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Correction: February 13, 2004, Friday An obituary on Feb. 8 about Oswald Villard Jr., an electrical engineer who did early work on over-the-horizon radar, misstated the surname of an electronics pioneer with whom he worked as a student at Stanford. It was William Hewlett, not Hewett.
obituary at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E5DA1F3BF93BA35751C0A9629C8B63
Oswald Garrison Villard Jr., a pioneer in the development of radar able to see over the horizon, died on Jan. 7 in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 87.
He died at a nursing home, said his daughter, Barbara Suzanne Villard of Tucson.
Dr. Villard, an electronics engineer, parlayed his youthful interest in radio into advanced research with military and other uses, including ''stealth'' technology to stop radar from bouncing back from aircraft, so planes are nearly invisible to it.
His greatest contribution was leading research that vastly expanded the range of high-frequency radar signals by bouncing them off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer about 50 miles above the earth's surface. The result was that radar could peer around the earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away.
Dr. Villard was a professor at Stanford University for five decades. In 1969, when Stanford ceased all classified work in response to antiwar protests, he moved his research group to Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif.
Among the many honors Dr. Villard received was the highest civilian award made by the Department of Defense, called the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
He was born Sept. 17, 1916, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., part of a distinguished family that included his great-grandfather William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, and his grandfather Henry Villard, the editor, publisher and financier. His father, Oswald Sr., took over as publisher of the family-owned magazine The Nation, but left when it abandoned its stance opposing the entry of the United States in World War II.
Oswald Jr. became interested in electricity as a boy after being given ''Harper's Electricity Book for Boys,'' which he kept for the rest of his life. When he was about 12, the family chauffeur gave him a radio put together from a kit, Dr. Villard said in an oral history prepared by Rutgers University.
He went to high school at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and then to Yale, where he founded a radio club. He entered Stanford as a graduate student in electrical engineering. As a student Dr. Villard worked with David Packard and William Hewett, among other electronics pioneers, to develop the klystron tube, the basis of radar.
In World War II at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard, Dr. Villard worked on pioneering studies of radar jamming.
He returned to Stanford after the war and in 1947 designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel, like a telephone conversation. He earned his doctorate from Stanford in 1949.
Dr. Villard wrote over 60 technical papers and held six patents.
His wife, the former Barbara Slater Letts, died in 1996. In addition to his daughter, Dr. Villard is survived by two sons, Thomas, of Menlo Park, and John, of Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; and three grandchildren.
In the 1980's, Dr. Villard designed an inconspicuous antenna that could wipe out signals that jammed communications, allowing people in many countries to receive Voice of America radio programs. The devices, which were small enough to be concealed in newspapers, were requested by many Chinese after the student uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Correction: February 13, 2004, Friday An obituary on Feb. 8 about Oswald Villard Jr., an electrical engineer who did early work on over-the-horizon radar, misstated the surname of an electronics pioneer with whom he worked as a student at Stanford. It was William Hewlett, not Hewett.
obituary at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E5DA1F3BF93BA35751C0A9629C8B63
He died at a nursing home, said his daughter, Barbara Suzanne Villard of Tucson.
Dr. Villard, an electronics engineer, parlayed his youthful interest in radio into advanced research with military and other uses, including ''stealth'' technology to stop radar from bouncing back from aircraft, so planes are nearly invisible to it.
His greatest contribution was leading research that vastly expanded the range of high-frequency radar signals by bouncing them off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer about 50 miles above the earth's surface. The result was that radar could peer around the earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away.
Dr. Villard was a professor at Stanford University for five decades. In 1969, when Stanford ceased all classified work in response to antiwar protests, he moved his research group to Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif.
Among the many honors Dr. Villard received was the highest civilian award made by the Department of Defense, called the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
He was born Sept. 17, 1916, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., part of a distinguished family that included his great-grandfather William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, and his grandfather Henry Villard, the editor, publisher and financier. His father, Oswald Sr., took over as publisher of the family-owned magazine The Nation, but left when it abandoned its stance opposing the entry of the United States in World War II.
Oswald Jr. became interested in electricity as a boy after being given ''Harper's Electricity Book for Boys,'' which he kept for the rest of his life. When he was about 12, the family chauffeur gave him a radio put together from a kit, Dr. Villard said in an oral history prepared by Rutgers University.
He went to high school at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and then to Yale, where he founded a radio club. He entered Stanford as a graduate student in electrical engineering. As a student Dr. Villard worked with David Packard and William Hewett, among other electronics pioneers, to develop the klystron tube, the basis of radar.
In World War II at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard, Dr. Villard worked on pioneering studies of radar jamming.
He returned to Stanford after the war and in 1947 designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel, like a telephone conversation. He earned his doctorate from Stanford in 1949.
Dr. Villard wrote over 60 technical papers and held six patents.
His wife, the former Barbara Slater Letts, died in 1996. In addition to his daughter, Dr. Villard is survived by two sons, Thomas, of Menlo Park, and John, of Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; and three grandchildren.
In the 1980's, Dr. Villard designed an inconspicuous antenna that could wipe out signals that jammed communications, allowing people in many countries to receive Voice of America radio programs. The devices, which were small enough to be concealed in newspapers, were requested by many Chinese after the student uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Correction: February 13, 2004, Friday An obituary on Feb. 8 about Oswald Villard Jr., an electrical engineer who did early work on over-the-horizon radar, misstated the surname of an electronics pioneer with whom he worked as a student at Stanford. It was William Hewlett, not Hewett.
obituary at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E5DA1F3BF93BA35751C0A9629C8B63
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