Harold D. Webb

Biography

Harold Donivan Webb, was born September 23, 1909 , in Johnson County, Indiana, a son of Guilford and Bertha Owens Webb. He married Margaret Hougham on August 15, 1937, in Johnson County. Webb received his A. B. degree from Franklin College, Indiana in 1931, his A.M. degree in Physics from Indiana University in 1932, and his Ph.D. degree from Indiana in 1939.

Webb was a civilian scientist with the U. S. Army Signal Corps' Evans Signal Laboratory at Belmar, N. J . (during 1942 - 47 World War II) and was a member of the team (of five) who sent the first radar signals through the ionosphere to the moon and received the return echoes, 10 January 1946. This achievement was highly publicized at the time. He continued work in ionospheric research, moon reflection and radio astronomy at the University of of Illinois.

He received the Alumni Citation Award from Franklin College in 1961 and the Everitt Award for teaching excellence from the U. of I's College of Engineering in 1974.

Professor Webb was a fellow of the AAAS, a Senior Member of IEEE, and a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, the Indiana Academy of Science, International Union of Radio Science (URSI), and Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kappa Nu honorary societies.

Webb died on May 25th, 1989.