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Eric Ash
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Sir Eric Albert Ash (31 January 1928 – 22 August 2021) was a British electrical engineer, past Rector of Imperial College and President of IEE, UK. He was elected an international member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for innovations in optics and acoustics and for leadership in education.[3]
Key Information
Early life and education
[edit]Eric Ash was born Ulrich Asch[4] in Berlin, the son of Dorothea Cecily (Schwarz) and Walter J. Asch,[5][6] a Jewish lawyer. The family emigrated to England in 1938 to escape Nazism. He was educated at the independent University College School, and at 17 won a scholarship to Imperial College London.
After graduating in electrical engineering, he continued his studies with doctoral research. His PhD supervisor was Dennis Gabor, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and his thesis was published as Electron Interaction Effects (1952). He worked on microwave tubes as a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University for two years, before returning to England to continue this work at the Standard Telecommunications Laboratory in London.
Career and research
[edit]Ash joined the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College in 1963, became a full professor in 1967. He was appointed Head of Department, and holder of the Pender Chair, in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society[7] on 17 March 1977, and was awarded its Clifford Paterson medal shortly afterwards. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1978.[8]
He worked on problems in physical electronics, ultrasonic signal processing[9][10] and imaging.[11] He won the Marconi Prize in 1984 "for leadership in electronic technology, including surface acoustic wave devices and optical fibre communications".[12]
He won the Royal Society Royal Medal in 1986, in "recognition of his outstanding researches on acoustic microscopy leading to wholly new techniques and substantial improvements in resolution of acoustic microscopes".[13] He also won the Institution of Electrical Engineers' Faraday Medal.
He was a Senior Member and Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (an organisation based in the United States that complements the IET) and a member of the Academia Europea.
Ash became rector of Imperial College in 1985. He sat on the board of British Telecom as a non-executive director from 1987 to 1993. In 1988, he was president of the IEE for one year. In 1987, he was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.[14]
After retiring as Rector in 1993, Ash was an emeritus professor in the Department of Physics at University College, 1993–1998, working on educational technology. He acted as CEO of the Student Loans Company 1994–1996, remaining a non-executive director of the company until the end of August 2000.
Ash was treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society 1997–2002. He has also served as a trustee of a number of other organisations including the Afghan Educational Trust,[15] the Dennis Rosen Memorial Trust, the Royal Institution, the London Science Museum and the Wolfson Foundation. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering[16] and an international member of the National Academy of Engineering.
In 2017, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics, UK.[17]
Death
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Wickramasinghe, H. Kumar (1974). Two and Three Dimensional Acoustic Holography in Solids. jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University College London (University of London). OCLC 500588924. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.477197.
- ^ Nikoonahad, Mehrdad (1983). Reflection Acoustic Microscopy for Micro-NDE (PhD thesis). University College London (University of London).
- ^ "NAE: Sir Eric Ash". Retrieved 16 May 2021.
- ^ "Sir Eric Ash obituary". TheGuardian.com. 25 November 2021.
- ^ The International Who's Who: 1990-1991. Europa Publications. 1990. ISBN 9780946653584.
- ^ People of Today. Debrett's Peerage Limited. 2006. ISBN 9781870520324.
- ^ Yeatman, Eric M. (2025). "Eric Albert Ash. 31 January 1928—22 August 2021". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2024.0026.
- ^ "Royal Academy of Engineering: The Fellowship". Retrieved 11 July 2020.
- ^ Mason, I. M.; Ash, E. A. (1973). "Acoustic Surface Waveguides - Analysis and Assessment". IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. 21 (4): 225–236. Bibcode:1973ITMTT..21..225L. doi:10.1109/TMTT.1973.1127973.
- ^ Ash, E. A. (1978). Oliner, A. A. (ed.). Fundamentals of Signal Processing. Springer. ISBN 3662309173.
- ^ Ash, Eric A.; Hill, C. R., eds. (1982). Acoustical Imaging. Vol. 12. New York: Plenum Publish Corporation. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-9780-9. ISBN 0-306-41247-0.
- ^ Details of the 1984 Marconi Prize, marconi foundation.org. Accessed 19 December 2022.
- ^ Royal Medal, royalsoc.ac.uk. Accessed 19 December 2022.
- ^ "Honorary Fellows of the Royal Microscopical Society".
- ^ Daily Telegraph article about the Afghan Educational Trust
- ^ "Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering". Archived from the original on 28 August 2010. Retrieved 11 February 2011.
- ^ "Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Physics, UK". Archived from the original on 5 July 2020. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ "Sir Eric ASH - Deaths Announcements - Telegraph Announcements". announcements.telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
Sir Eric ASH Passed away peacefully at home on August 22nd aged 93. Much loved husband of Clare for 67 years and adored father of Gill, Cany, Lucy, Emily and Jenny. Grandfather to Lily, Sarah, Louise, Dora, Matilda, Alex, Jo, Constance, Ruby, Carmen and Luc. ...
- ^ "Professor Sir Eric Ash - Obituary". The Times. 6 September 2021. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
External links
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Eric Ash
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Early Life and Education
Birth and Family Background
Eric Ash was born Ulrich Asch on 31 January 1928 in Berlin, Germany. [2] He was the son of Dorothea Cecily (née Schwarz) and Walter J. Asch, a middle-class Jewish couple. [2] His father worked as a lawyer and served as head of the legal department at AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft), a major German electrical company. [2] [4] Ash was the younger of two children, with an elder sister named Anne (later Anne Goodwin). [2] His family formed part of Berlin's German-Jewish community during the pre-World War II era, a period marked by growing challenges under the rising Nazi regime. [2] [1] The family's decision to flee Nazism led to their emigration in 1938, after which he became known as Eric Ash. [2]Emigration to England
The family of Ulrich Asch emigrated from Germany to England in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime and the escalating persecution of Jews. [1] [4] His father, Walter Asch, head of the legal department at AEG, had initially downplayed the threat posed by Hitler but recognized the danger by 1938 and arranged the family's departure. [5] [6] Following Kristallnacht, when the situation for Jews became increasingly perilous, Walter utilized connections to facilitate their move to London. [5] Upon arrival in London, the family anglicized their surname from Asch to Ash, and Ulrich adopted the name Eric Ash. [5] [7] They settled in the city immediately, establishing a new life amid the gathering tensions of impending war. [6] As a child refugee, Eric experienced the challenges of early adjustment in wartime England. [7] His parents pursued a policy of total immersion in English language and culture to aid the transition, and although already nearly bilingual in German and English, Eric adapted to the new environment. [6] The family remained in London throughout the conflict, enduring the Blitz with nights spent in shelters and their building suffering bomb damage. [6] Eric later recalled witnessing major wartime events, including the great fire of London. [6]Education and Doctoral Studies
Eric Ash attended University College School in London, where he completed his secondary education after emigrating from Germany in 1938. [6] [8] He won a scholarship to Imperial College London and studied electrical engineering there, graduating with a BSc in 1948. [6] [1] Ash remained at Imperial College for his doctoral research, initially exploring antenna problems before becoming a research student under Dennis Gabor, who had recently joined the faculty. [6] He completed his PhD in 1952 with a thesis titled "Electron Interaction Effects," which addressed phenomena in electron optics—including the development and experimental demonstration of a novel electron lens that used a cloud of electrons to produce negative spherical aberration compensating for uncorrectable vacuum lens defects noted by A. Scherzer—as well as early plasma physics investigations involving measurements of field distributions and oscillations in plasma sheaths. [6] Following his PhD, Ash was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and spent two years (1952–1954) as a research fellow at Stanford University, conducting research in applied physical electronics with a focus on microwave tubes, particularly backward-wave oscillators, in collaboration with figures such as Dean Watkins and Donald Dunn. [6] [8] During this period at Stanford, he met his future wife, Clare Babb. [8]Professional Career
Early Career and Industry Roles
After completing his PhD under Dennis Gabor in 1952, Eric Ash was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and spent two years at Stanford University, where he researched microwave tubes including the development of backward-wave oscillators. [8] [2] Returning to London in 1954, he spent a year at Queen Mary College working on linear accelerators. [8] In 1955 he joined Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) in Harlow as a research engineer, initially continuing work on microwave tubes. [3] [1] At STL he later shifted focus and rose to head of the high-speed devices group. [8] He remained in this industry role until 1963. [2] [6]Academic Positions at UCL
Professor Sir Eric Ash joined the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London in 1963 as a Senior Lecturer, an appointment described in the department's annual report as "of very special significance." [9] [3] He was promoted to Professor in 1967 and spent 22 years at UCL, where much of his research career unfolded. [3] [9] In 1980, Ash became Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and holder of the Pender Chair, roles he held until his departure in 1985 to assume the Rectorship of Imperial College London. [3] [9] During his leadership in the 1970s and especially the 1980s, he recruited exceptional academics—including Professors Gareth Parry and John Midwinter—helping transform the department into one with an unusually high number of Royal Society Fellows by the mid-1980s. [9] He fostered a culture of excellence, duty, pride, and personal attention while enforcing rigorous standards in teaching, research, and administration, insisting on academics' presence in the department during term time and personally teaching foundational courses such as fields and waves. [9] Ash was a demanding yet generous mentor who supervised a diverse and international group of graduate students, many of whom advanced to prominent positions in academia and industry; he provided lifelong guidance and authored an influential manual for PhD students that shaped numerous research careers. [9] [2] As a committed advocate for gender equity, he actively mentored women in engineering to address systemic barriers in the male-dominated field. [9]Rector of Imperial College London
Sir Eric Ash served as Rector of Imperial College London from 1985 to 1993.[3][2] A major achievement during his tenure was overseeing the merger of Imperial College with St Mary's Hospital Medical School in 1988, which integrated medicine into the institution and was intended to reposition the college for future challenges while increasing the proportion of female students.[3][7][1] He raised the number of female students as part of broader efforts to promote gender diversity in science and engineering.[1][7] Ash was an early adopter of email as a communication tool and drove its institution-wide adoption around 1987 by implementing a policy of communicating exclusively via email with heads of department to overcome resistance from colleagues.[7][1][2] From 1987 to 1993, he concurrently served as a non-executive director of British Telecom.[2][7]Later Administrative and Advisory Roles
After his rectorship at Imperial College London ended in 1993, Sir Eric Ash took on several key administrative and advisory positions. He returned to University College London as an emeritus professor from 1993 to 1998, shifting his focus to educational technology and supervising students in that area.[2] From 1994 to 1996 he served as Chief Executive Officer of the Student Loans Company, which had encountered financial difficulties due to low repayment rates on early mortgage-style loans; he played a central role in stabilizing the organization during this challenging period.[2] He remained a non-executive director of the company until 2000.[7] Ash had previously served as President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1988.[2] From 1997 to 2002 he held the positions of Treasurer and Vice-President of the Royal Society, overseeing financial and strategic matters for the prestigious institution.[2]Research and Scientific Contributions
Surface Acoustic Wave Devices
Eric Ash made pioneering contributions to surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology, which involves sound waves that propagate along the surface of piezoelectric crystals and can be precisely manipulated using electrode patterns to process signals.[1] He was among the first to advocate for the use of acoustic surface waves in signal processing, working on filters, correlators, and related devices at University College London.[6] His research focused on practical SAW devices that convert electrical signals into acoustic waves and back again, enabling precise shaping and manipulation of signals in ways difficult to replicate with traditional electronics.[1] Ash developed SAW-based filters capable of passing a precise set of frequencies while rejecting others, with early applications aimed at improving military radar performance.[1] These compact, high-performance devices, featuring a tiny footprint suitable for integration with chip technology, soon found broader uses.[1] The technology became essential in consumer electronics, including practically every television receiver for intermediate frequency filtering and at least two units in every mobile phone for signal processing.[1] SAW devices also proved important in space-borne communications systems and other applications requiring accurate frequency definition.[10] Through his leadership and innovative work, Ash helped establish SAW filters as a standard component in modern electronics, contributing significantly to the ubiquity of compact, reliable signal-processing solutions across diverse applications.[1][10]Acoustic Microscopy and Subwavelength Imaging
Eric Ash pioneered subwavelength imaging with his 1972 paper in Nature, co-authored with G. Nicholls, which introduced the super-resolution aperture scanning microscope. [11] This technique used a mechanically scanned sub-wavelength aperture to generate evanescent fields, achieving resolutions of 1/60 of the wavelength with 3-centimeter microwaves in test patterns, thereby surpassing the Abbe diffraction limit by a large margin. [2] The work provided the first experimental demonstration of near-field super-resolution imaging and proved highly influential, as acknowledged by Eric Betzig in his 2014 Nobel Prize lecture, where he credited it with removing all doubt about the feasibility of shattering the diffraction barrier through near-field methods and inspiring subsequent developments in near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM). [12] Ash later led one of the world's leading research groups in scanning acoustic microscopy at University College London, where his team was the first in the UK to pursue this field and became internationally recognized alongside Calvin Quate's group at Stanford for major advancements. [2] Building on Quate's invention of the modern scanning acoustic microscope, Ash's group developed innovative techniques, including an alternative lens structure that shortened the ultrasonic path in water to reduce attenuation while preserving diffraction-limited focusing. [2] These efforts yielded wholly new approaches and substantial improvements in the resolution of acoustic microscopes, which use ultrahigh-frequency sound waves to probe internal features of solid materials non-destructively. [10] Acoustic microscopy enabled wide-ranging applications, including defect detection in electronic components during manufacture, subsurface imaging within opaque structures and biological cells, and non-invasive analysis of paint layers in paintings and cultural heritage objects. [1] In recognition of his outstanding researches on acoustic microscopy, which led to these new techniques and resolution enhancements, Ash received the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1986. [10]Broader Impact on Electronics and Optics
Eric Ash's pioneering contributions to surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices profoundly influenced signal processing in electronics, enabling compact and precise filtering that became essential to modern consumer and communications technologies. [1] His development of practical SAW filters and related components transformed electrical signals into manipulable acoustic waves on surfaces, resulting in their widespread adoption in television receivers worldwide and in mobile phones, where multiple such devices per unit support frequency selection and signal integrity. [1] These innovations extended to satellite communications systems and other applications demanding high-performance, miniaturized signal processing compatible with integrated circuitry. [4] His work on acoustic microscopy advanced ultrasonic imaging techniques, particularly through improved resolution and lens designs that reduced attenuation in scanning systems. [2] Such developments enhanced non-destructive testing capabilities, allowing industry to probe internal defects in solid materials and electronic components using ultra-high-frequency sound waves without causing damage. [7] These methods found broad application in manufacturing quality assurance and materials evaluation across engineering sectors. [2] Ash also made notable contributions to optics, including his foundational 1972 demonstration of subwavelength resolution scanning microscopy, which influenced subsequent near-field optical techniques and their applications in imaging. [2] Through his supervision of PhD students at University College London, many of whom advanced to senior positions in academia and industrial research laboratories, Ash extended his intellectual influence on succeeding generations in electronics and optics. [9] [2]Awards and Honours
Eric Ash received numerous awards and honours in recognition of his contributions to electrical engineering, ultrasonics, acoustic microscopy, and academic leadership. A selection of the major ones includes:- 1968: Elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)[2]
- 1977: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)[2]
- 1977: Clifford Paterson Medal, Royal Society[2]
- 1978: Elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng)[2]
- 1980: Faraday Medal, Institution of Electrical Engineers (now Institution of Engineering and Technology)[2]
- 1983: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)[2]
- 1984: Marconi Prize, Marconi Society[2]
- 1986: Royal Medal, Royal Society (for his work on acoustic microscopes)[2]
- 1986: Achievement Award, IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society[2]
- 1987: Honorary Fellow, Royal Microscopical Society[2]
- 1990: Knight Bachelor (knighted in the New Year's Honours)[2]
- 1990: Member, Academia Europaea[2]
- 2001: International Member, National Academy of Engineering (United States)[2]
- 2017: Honorary Fellow, Institute of Physics[2]