Hulburt, Edward Olson

BornVermillion, South Dakota, USA, 12 October 1890

DiedEaston, Maryland, USA, 8 October 1982

American optical physicist Edward Hulburt received his AB from Johns Hopkins University in 1911 and his Ph.D. in physics there in 1915, with a thesis on the reflecting properties of metals in the ultraviolet. After holding teaching positions at Hopkins and Western Reserve universities, he was appointed the superintendent of the physical optics division of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington in 1924. He spent the rest of his career there, becoming director of research in 1949 and retiring in 1956. During World War I, Hulburt served in the Signal Corps, rising to the rank of captain, and during World War II he was part of the army/navy vision committee.

Hulburt worked on a wide variety of problems in the propagation and measurement of both light and radio waves, investigating electron tubes as radio detectors as early as 1920. He developed a theory of aurorae and magnetic storms, in which...