Lee Davenport Dies at 95; Developed Battlefront Radar

"Lee Davenport, a physicist who developed a radar device that helped bring Allied victories on major World War II battlefronts in Europe and the Pacific, died Friday in Greenwich, Conn. He was 95.

"The cause was cancer, his daughter, Carol Davenport, said.

"Mr. Davenport was working toward a doctorate in physics at the University of Pittsburgh when he joined the secret Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in February 1941. Bringing together leading scientists and financed by the federal government, the Rad Lab, as it came to be known, forged technology for America’s anticipated entry into the war.

"He oversaw the day-to-day work and the testing that created the SCR-584 (for Signal Corps Radio), a microwave radar device with a sophisticated scanning technique to track an enemy plane and a computer to adjust automatically the angle of antiaircraft guns to shoot it down."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/01davenport.html?hpw

 

RIP

 

RIP Mr. Davenport