William L Hughes
William L. Hughes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 2, 1926 |
| Died | February 21, 2007 (aged 80) |
| Residence | Rapid City, SD, United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Electrical engineering, Inventor |
William Lewis Hughes (December 2, 1926 – February 21, 2007) was an American electrical engineer, university professor, and inventor. Over a career spanning roughly 1944 to 1993 he taught and held administrative posts at Iowa State University, Oklahoma State University, and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and worked in color television, energy systems, and electromagnetic theory. He was a Life Fellow of the IEEE and, late in life, argued for an electromagnetic interpretation of physical phenomena in his book The Electromagnetic Nature of Things.
Biography
Hughes earned a BS in electrical engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in 1949, followed by an MS (1950) and a Ph.D. (1952) in electrical engineering from Iowa State University. During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy, and he also worked as a broadcast engineer.
He held academic appointments as a professor of electrical engineering at Iowa State University and at Oklahoma State University, where he served as department head. He later served as Vice President of Academic Affairs at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. He was also president of InEn Corporation of Stillwater, Oklahoma. In his later years he was Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and continued to teach power electronics and guide graduate students.
Hughes lived in Rapid City, South Dakota. He was married and had four children and four grandchildren. He died on February 21, 2007.
Work
Hughes authored two engineering textbooks, including Nonlinear Electrical Networks (Ronald Press, 1960), and contributed to five McGraw-Hill Standard Engineering Handbooks. He wrote more than 60 technical papers in color television, energy systems, and electromagnetic theory, and held 14 patents in color television and energy systems.
In his later research, published largely through Galilean Electrodynamics and collected in his 2006 book The Electromagnetic Nature of Things, Hughes explored the idea that inertial mass, gravity, and other physical effects might be explained on an electromagnetic basis. This work included re-examinations of classic experiments in physics such as the Michelson–Morley, Trouton–Noble, and Kennedy–Thorndike experiments, and a proposed challenge to Coulomb's law.
The Slovak-Canadian researcher Jaroslav J. Kopernicky, for whose papers in Galilean Electrodynamics Hughes served as peer reviewer, wrote of Hughes's work:
- "I am not ready to take Hughes writings without reservations, but I believe (the) results of his works are important steps toward the true explanation of (the) nature of our world. I also believe that experimental results described in his book (The Electromagnetic Nature of Things) have to be on hand especially in respected institutions and to scientists striving for the truth of our nature. Considering Einstein's mentality and openmindedness, if Einstein and Hughes were alive today, they would be very good friends."
Honors
- Life Fellow of the IEEE
- Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology
Abstracts
- 2006 - "Michelson-Morley Revisited, or Can the Michelson-Morley Be Real?"
- 2006 - "Michelson-Morley, Trouton-Noble, Kennedy-Thorndike, and the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction"
- 2006 - "Trouton-Noble Revisited"
- 2004 - "A Challenge to Coulomb's Law: Implications for Gravity and Matter Structure"
- 2004 - "On Kopernicky?s Conjecture: Gravity is a Difference Between Electrostatic Attraction and Repulsion"
- 1995 - "A Simple Mathematical Model Which Suggests an Electromagnetic Basis for Inertial Mass"
- 1994 - "A Second Look at a Fundamental Concept in Electromagnetics"
Books
- 2006 - "The Electromagnetic Nature of Things"