New York University Polytechnic

Updated April 21, 2011

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http://www.poly.edu/academics/departments/electrical/overview

Marcuvitz taught here

A bit of history from Elaine, we'll get back to editing this page after the IEEE show in June. Thanks!

The New York University divested itself of its School of Engineering which merged with Brooklyn Poly in 1973 and became the Polytechnic Institute of NY (PINY). That name was changed to Polytechnic University sometime in the early 1980’s and it has morphed yet again through another recent NYU merger and is now Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Nathan Marcuvitz was still a professor at the PINY Long Island campus when I was a student there and I had him for a Turbulent Systems and Stochastic Processes graduate course in 1982. I don’t know when he finally retired but to my knowledge, he had always stayed affiliated with the same people, however the institution name kept changing. At that time - late 70’ early 80’s - the MRI was at the PINY Long Island campus I was very fortunate to have had many of the original MRI engineers as my professors (I just didn’t know I was fortunate at the time.)

Wheeler Laboratories was then part of Hazeltine Corporation, also located on Long Island, and my first engineering job as a summer intern was to work for Harold Wheeler. I had a good chuckle when I read in his bio about some of Dr. Wheeler’s “eccentricities”; I learned that I had to use a “Wheeler Chart” which was his variation of a Smith Chart. I can’t say which one came first but I hid my Smith charts and used them on the sly. Since computer programming was taught in schools at the time, I had programmed Dr. Wheeler’s inductor nomographs into a spreadsheet that I had developed to quickly design antenna matching networks. He showed up in my office upset that I hadn’t asked his permission to do that but when he saw how handy it was, I was forgiven. Dr. Wheeler was not only a brilliant mentor, but he was a kind and gentle person as well. I was very happy to see his well-earned entry in the Microwave Hall of Fame as he had personally mentored most of the microwave engineers who still work on Long Island. My husband, Joseph L. Merenda, was recently honored at an IEEE/MTT banquet by receiving the Harold Wheeler Award for his contribution to the advancement of the microwave industry, so your acknowledgement of Dr. Wheeler in the MHF makes Joe’s award extra special. (There is another microwave engineer named Joseph T. Merenda, no relation, and we all worked together at Wheeler Labs of Hazeltine Corp. in the 1980’s.)