Robert Helliwell

Robert A. Helliwell (September 2, 1920 – May 3, 2011) was an electrical engineer and professor at Stanford University. He was one of the pioneering scientists in the study of whistlers and related ionospheric phenomena.

Early life Helliwell was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, on September 2, 1920. He and his mother moved to Palo Alto, California after his father died. Helliwell and his wife, whom he knew in high school, were both undergraduates at Stanford University.

Career Helliwell was associated with Stanford University for his entire career, receiving all his academic credentials there and becoming a member of the electrical engineering faculty in 1946. Helliwell received his AB degree in 1942, a combined MA and electrical engineering degree in 1944, and his PhD in 1948.

Whistlers Helliwell's greatest discovery was accidental, as is often the case in science. Helliwell and one of his students, Jack Mallinckrodt, were investigating lightning noise at very low radio frequencies at Stanford University in 1950. Mallinckrodt heard some whistling sounds and brought them to Helliwell's attention. Another describes how injection of a low frequency radio signal into the magnetosphere causes a radio quieting of the natural noise that's associated with these frequencies. Another paper showed that the alternating current power grids in North America (60 Hz) and Europe (50 Hz) affect auroral chorus emissions.

Honors Helliwell was a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Geophysical Union, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the United States National Academy of Sciences. The National Science Foundation named a range of hills in Antarctica, along the coast of Victoria Land on the Ross Sea, the Helliwell Hills in his honor.