IEEE History Center: Robert Adler, 1913 - 2007

Robert Adler was born in Vienna in 1913. After receiving his doctorate in physics, he became engaged in patent work there, and later went to England. After the war broke out, he came to Chicago and worked first in the field of measuring instruments. He joined Zenith Radio in 1941. Ten years later he was made associate director of research, vice president in 1959, and director of research in 1963.

Adler developed the gated-beam tube which represented a new concept in receiving tubes. His noise-gated synch clipper and automatic gain control secured stability of television reception in the fringe areas. Low-noise devices have claimed his attention ever since. His contribution to low-noise traveling-wave tubes was important in military communications. Later he applied the new principle of parametric amplification to electron beams.

Electromechanical devices have also interested Adler for a long time. During World War II he worked on high- frequency magnetostrictive oscillators. Remote control of television receivers by an ultrasonic gong grew out of this work. Interest in the interaction between light and ultrasound led to new ways of deflecting and modulating laser beams, using Bragg diffraction for television displays and in high-speed printing. More recently, Adler pioneered the use of acoustic surface waves in intermediate frequency filters for color television. Concurrently he devoted attention to optical video disk players.

In addition to his own research, in the thirty-five years after he joined the research group at Zenith, he played an increasingly important role in forging one of the great industrial research teams in the U.S., at times numbering more than three hundred people. When economic exigencies compelled a drastic retrenching of this activity, rather than preside over it, Adler resigned his post in 1978. He continues, however, as consultant to Zenith. He is also research director of the Extel Corporation in Northbrook, Illinois. Always committed to the continuing education of engineers, Adler is also adjunct professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

Adler has been granted more than 150 U.S. Patents and has published over 45 technical papers and articles. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1951 "for his development of transmission and detection devices for frequency modulated signals and of electro-mechanical filter systems." He received the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 1958, the Inventor of the Year award from George Washington University in 1967, the IEEE Outstanding Achievement Award in Consumer Electronics in 1970, the Outstanding Technical Paper Award from the Chicago Section of the IEEE in 1974, and the Edison Medal in 1980. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

His hobbies attest to the man. Whenever he can, Adler makes a pilgrimage, with his wife Mary, to the Rockies for mountain hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter. He obtained his pilot license twenty-five years ago and is an enthusiastic flier.

One incident is characteristic. When sent to Moscow as a member of the IEEE delegation to the Popov Society Meeting in 1969, he learned Russian so that, as a goodwill gesture to his hosts, he could present his paper in their language.  (Editor's Note: Adler passed away on 15 February 2007 in Boise, Idaho.)

This biography was published by IEEE in 1980.