Nathan O. Sokal
Nathan O. Sokal was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He is best known for his contribution to the design of RF power amplifiers and the development of class E power amplifiers.
Biography
Sokal was born in 1929 in Brooklyn. He was born to a family of History of [the Jews in Poland|Polish-Jewish] descent who emigrated to the United States in 1924. His parents were medical doctors. Attending Stuyvesant High School in the 1940s, he received B.S. and S.M degrees in electrical engineering in 1950 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his masters studies were advised by O. H. Straus. During his studies in MIT, he was a co-op student and worked at Philco during alternate semesters. His work at Philco ranged from the design of control and electronics units for radar systems to the electrical testing of loudspeakers and thyratrons. In 1952, He married Zelda Kaufman Sokal, a fellow New Yorker and a student at Radcliffe College. They had three children: physicist and professor Alan Sokal, Karen Sokal-Gutierrez and Diane Sokal.Following his graduation, Sokol held engineering and supervisory positions in various companies, including Mack Trucks and Sylvania Electric Products. He became a staff member at MIT, and served as a United States Air Force lieutenant from 1954 to 1956. During his tenure at Holmes and Narver, Inc., he worked on instrumentation and data recording of blast effects for nuclear tests at Enewetak Atoll. Subsequently, he became an engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked on the design, manufacturing, installation and operation of analog and digital equipment. In 1965, he founded the electronics consulting firm Design Automation, Inc., which provided product design, design
review and redesign, and technology development, particularly on power electronics for switching mode power conversion and amplification below 2.5 GHz frequencies.
Sokal is best known for his work on high-efficiency RF power amplifiers, which was motivated by his interest in amateur radio. In the 1970s, he, along with his son Alan, introduced the class E switching-mode power amplifier. Sokal also invented a high-efficiency linear RF power amplifier using envelope elimination and restoration. His inventions were subject to multiple patents. In 1989, he was elected as an IEEE fellow for his contributions to the technology of high-efficiency power conversion and RF power amplification. In 2007, he, along with his son Alan, received the Microwave Pioneer Award "in recognition of a major, lasting contribution of the development of the class-E high-efficiency switching-mode RF power amplifier." In 2007, he received a honorary doctorate from Technical University of Madrid for his work on RF power amplifiers.
Sokal died on 8 May 2016 in Newton, Massachusetts, and was survived by his wife, three children and six grandchildren.
Selected publications
;Books;Journal articles
;Patents
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