Page 61 - January 2009

Passings
Dick Stern
Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University PO Box 30, State College, Pennsylvania 16804
David Middleton
1920–2008
David Middleton, a physicist whose original research led to major advance- ments in the understanding of communi- cation systems—from radar during World War II to the wireless communica- tion systems of our present age—died on 16 November 2008.
Dr. Middleton was a scientist, a
researcher, and a founder of the field of
statistical communication theory. He
devoted his entire career to studying sig-
nal processing and the transfer of infor-
mation from one point in space-time to
another, with numerous applications in
radar, underwater listening devices, satel-
lite technology, and signal processing. Dr.
Middleton was able to relate engineering problems of com- munications to the physical properties of communication channels. According to Vincent Poor, Dean of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, Dr. Middleton's research was unusual in the way he “emphasized the close relationships between the underlying physics and the intended engineering applications.” His theoretical models of communication chan- nels and systems have contributed to the explosive growth of data and wireless communications systems.
David began his career in 1943 at the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory as special research assistant to Professor J. H. Van Vleck (later a Nobel Laureate in physics), with whom he took his Ph.D. in 1947. Together Dr. Middleton and Van Vleck (and simultaneously but independently, D. O. North at RCA Laboratories) developed the matched-filter principle critical to data communications and an enduring concept in the field today. In 1943 Dr. Middleton began the analysis of signals and noise passing through nonlinear devices, such as the “chaff,” or aluminum strips, used to jam radar signals to protect American ships and aircraft from detection.
Published in 1960 and widely translated into many lan- guages, Dr. Middleton’s seminal work, An Introduction to
Statistical Communication Theory, played a major role in integrating statistical meth- ods into the education of engineers in communications, radiolocation, and relat- ed fields. Leon Cohen, Professor of Physics at Hunter College in New York, wrote: “Dr. Middleton’s book is one of those texts that is so extraordinary for its clarity and depth that one marvels at it and the author. It is perhaps the greatest book ever written on noise, probability theory, and stochastic processes. ...The classic book on noise, written with style and ele- gance, [it] covers a panoramic view unmatched by any other publication.”
From 1954 to 2008 Dr. Middleton was a consultant to universities, industry, and the federal gov- ernment. During the Cold War era of the 1950s through the 1980s, his theoretical work for the government was applied to antisubmarine warfare systems, in particular to passive and active sonar systems to track Soviet submarines. During the Détente of the 1970s, when U.S. and Russian scientists began pursuing joint projects, he served as scientific editor for sev- eral Russian texts in his field and made presentations in the former Soviet Union, where he was officially recognized and
highly regarded in his field.
Dr. Middleton’s work in statistical communication theory
included the handling of random processes and the applica- tion of decision theory to signal detection and estimation. In statistical physics, he contributed to a greater understanding of propagation and scattering in random media, with an emphasis on the underwater environment. After 1968, his work expanded to include electromagnetic compatibility, with particular attention to non-Gaussian noise and interference models, and nonlinear signal processing for manmade and natural electromagnetic and acoustic environments. He served on the U.S. Naval Advisory Research Committee (1970-77) and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Supercomputing Research Center, Institute of Defense
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60 Acoustics Today, January 2009