engineering

Leopold B. Felsen

Leopold B. Felsen is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Leopold B. Felsen rather than just read about it. In short: Leopold Benno Felsen (May 7, 1924 – September 24, 2005) was a German-born American electrical engineer and physicist known for his fundamental contributions to electromagnetism and wave-based disciplines. For the most of his career, he was a professor of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, which later became New York University Tandon School of Engineering.

Key takeaways

Leopold B. Felsen belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Leopold B. Felsen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Leopold B. Felsen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Leopold Benno Felsen (May 7, 1924 – September 24, 2005) was a German-born American electrical engineer and physicist known for his fundamental contributions to electromagnetism and wave-based disciplines. For the most of his career, he was a professor of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, which later became New York University Tandon School of Engineering.

Biography Leopold Benno Felsen was born on May 7, 1924, in Munich to Markus and Anna Felsen. He was of Polish-Jewish descent, with his father being a Polish citizen. His family was persecuted by the Nazi regime due to their ancestry; in 1940, he was sent to the United States by his family to live with a relative. While his parents survived and joined him in the United States in 1946, many of his family members including his elder sister Johanna died during the Holocaust. He received his bachelor, master, and PhD degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, in 1948, 1950, and 1952, respectively, all in electrical engineering. After his educations he became professor at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and at Boston University College of Engineering, an IEEE life fellow and a fellow of both the Acoustical Society of America and the Optical Society of America. In 1973, he coauthored with his PhD advisor Nathan Marcuvitz a textbook titled Radiation and Scattering of Waves which published by Prentice Hall in its Electrical Engineering Series. This was a classic worldwide textbook which immediately became widely used by researchers and has been described as "The Bible" in applied electromagnetism. Radiation and Scattering of Waves was reissued by IEEE in 1994 and 2003 as one of classic reissues in the collection of The IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Wave Theory. Following his retirement from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1994, Felsen relocated Boston to be near his family and accepted a faculty position at Boston University, teaching there until his death. From 1970s onward, he lived with muscular dystrophy. He died on September 24, 2005, in Boston, following complications from a surgery, and was survived by his two children and three grandchildren.

Awards In 1977, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering "for his contributions to the theory and application of microwave propagation in complex media and for leadership in engineering education." In 1991 he won the IEEE Heinrich Hertz Medal.

Publications

Authored Felsen LB, Marcuvitz N, Radiation and Scattering of Waves, Wiley-IEEE, 2003. Felsen LB, Mongiardo M, Russer P, Electromagnetic Field Computation by Network Methods, Springer, 2009.

Edited Bertoni HL, Carin L, Felsen LB, (Eds), Ultra-Wideband, Short-Pulse Electromagnetics, vol 1, Springer, 1993. Bertoni HL, Felsen LB, (Eds), Directions in Electromagnetic Wave Modeling, Springer, 1991. Carin L, Felsen LB, (Eds), Ultra-Wideband, Short-Pulse Electromagnetics, vol 2, Springer, 1995. Felsen LB, (Ed), Hybrid Formulation of Wave Propagation and Scattering, Martinus Nijhoff, 1984. Felsen LB, (Ed), Transient Electromagnetic Fields, Springer, 1976. Pinto IM, Galdi V, Felsen LB, (Eds), Electromagnetics in a Complex World: Challenges and Perspectives, Springer, 2004.

Tributed Russer P, Mongiardo M, (Eds), Fields, Networks, Computational Methods, and Systems in Modern Electrodynamics: A Tribute to Leopold B. Felsen, Springer, 2004. Sevgi L, Electromagnetic Modeling and Simulation, Wiley-IEEE, 2014.

See also List of textbooks in electromagnetism

Notes

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Leopold B. Felsen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Leopold B. Felsen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Leopold B. Felsen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Leopold B. Felsen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Leopold B. Felsen

In research: Leopold B. Felsen appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Leopold B. Felsen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Leopold B. Felsen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1924 births, 2005 deaths, 20th-century American engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Leopold B. Felsen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Leopold B. Felsen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Leopold B. Felsen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Leopold B. Felsen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Leopold B. Felsen in simple terms?

Why does Leopold B. Felsen matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Leopold B. Felsen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Leopold B. Felsen.