Ferdo Ivanek

Ferdo Ivanek (June 1, 1923 – October 2, 2021) was an American electrical engineer of Yugoslav origin. He is best known for his contributions to microwave oscillators and amplifiers. He is the father of the American actor Željko Ivanek.

Biography

Ferdinand Ivanek was born in Ljubljana, and grew up in the village of Zajezda in Hrvatsko Zagorje, and then moved to Varaždin where he completed middle school. During World War II, Ivanek's parents were hanged by the fascist Ustaše, while he also lost some 20 Jewish relatives on his mother's side, in Ustaše and Nazi concentration camps, as recounted in a book by his cousin Paul Schreiner.

Ivanek received his engineer's degree at the Technical High School in Zagreb (today's University of Zagreb) in 1948. In 1959, he emigrated to the United States to work as a research assistant at Stanford University's Microwave Integrated Circuits Laboratory, where he remained until 1962.

In 1967, he returned to the United States to work at Fairchild Semiconductor's Research and Development Division, where he focused on the applications of solid-state microwave devices. In 1986, he left Fairchild to establish Communications Research, a consulting firm. In 1995, he became an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University's Department of Engineering Economics Systems.