18 Facts About Frederick Terman

Frederick Emmons Terman was an American professor and academic administrator.

Frederick Terman was the dean of the school of engineering from 1944 to 1958 and provost from 1955 to 1965 at Stanford University.

Frederick Terman is widely credited as being the father of Silicon Valley.

Terman was born to Lewis Terman and Anna Belle Minton Terman on June 7,1900, in Indiana, US His father, Lewis Terman, a psychologist who studied gifted children and popularized the IQ test in America, was a professor at Stanford.

Frederick Terman's mother attended Central Normal College, Danville, Indiana, and taught English at a school nearby.

At the age of 10, Frederick Terman came to Stanford when his father joined the psychology faculty.

Frederick Terman completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry and his master's degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University.

Frederick Terman went on to earn an ScD in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1924 where his advisor was Vannevar Bush, who first proposed what became the National Science Foundation.

Frederick Terman returned to Stanford in 1925 as a member of the engineering faculty.

From 1925 to 1941 Frederick Terman designed a course of study and research in electronics at Stanford that focused on work with vacuum tubes, circuits, and instrumentation.

Frederick Terman received tenure at Stanford by having the administration match his tenure offer at Cornell University.

Frederick Terman hired Charles Litton and Karl Spangenberg, a student of William Littell Everitt.

Frederick Terman wrote Radio Engineering, one of the most important books on electrical and radio engineering, and to this day a good reference on those subjects.

Frederick Terman encouraged his students to form their own companies and personally invested in many of them, resulting in firms such as Litton Industries, Varian Associates, and Hewlett-Packard.

Frederick Terman was president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1941.

Frederick Terman served as Provost at Stanford from 1955 to 1965.

In 1964, Frederick Terman became a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering.

In 1966 Frederick Terman played a central role in helping the Park Chung-hee Administration establish the Korea Advanced Institute of Science, which later became KAIST.