Professional papers of Henry G. Booker, mathematician and physicist trained at Cambridge University in the 1930s. His research focused on radio wave propagation, during a long teaching career first at Cambridge University (1936-1947) and, subsequently, at Cornell University (1948-1964), and the University of California, San Diego where he founded the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (1965-1988). Booker wrote four books: AN APPROACH TO ELECTRICAL SCIENCE (1959), A VECTOR APPROACH TO OSCILLATIONS (1965), ENERGY IN ELECTROMAGNETISM (1982), and COLD PLASMA WAVES (1984, also translated into Chinese). The bulk of the material dates from 1970-1988. Correspondence, lecture notes, examinations, reprints, notebooks and loose research notes, reports, grants and contracts comprise the collection with teaching materials representing the greatest quantity. Teaching materials are in some cases simultaneously manuscript drafts for text books. Of particular interest is correspondence between Booker and Kenneth Budden debating the interpretation of the QL/QT phenomenon. Other correspondence between Booker and historians discusses the work of Nobelist E.V. Appleton and his lack of acknowledgement of a contributor to his prize winning work. Also of note are files on the career of a student who later became a prize winning science fiction author, Glen David Brin, and Booker's files documenting student concerns during the Vietnam era.

Henry George Booker was born in England in 1910 and became a U.S. citizen in 1952. He earned his degrees from Cambridge University (B.A. 1933, pure and applied mathematics; Ph.D. 1936, ionospheric physics). Booker became a Fellow of Christ's College in 1935, where he studied radio wave propagation. He later took a leave of absence to continue this research as a Visiting Scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.

20.00 linear feet (50 archives boxes, 12 oversize folders)

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