 | In this photograph documenting one of the memorable moments of Felix Zweig's years at Yale, the dean of engineering (right) watches as a hood is placed on Yale honorand President John F. Kennedy at the 1962 Commencement ceremony. |
Felix Zweig, a noted electrical engineer and former dean of engineering at
Yale who began a 53-year association with the University as an undergraduate
in 1934, died on Sept. 20 in Santa Rosa, California, of complications from
Parkinson’s disease. He was 90 years old.
T H I S
In Memoriam: Felix Zweig
Former dean’s impact still felt in Yale engineering today
Zweig earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1938 and a Ph.D. in
electrical engineering in 1941 from Yale. His research focused on control systems
and radar systems. His doctoral thesis dealt with a variable-speed motor for
speed control, and during the years after World War II, he was active in several
research projects sponsored by the General Electric Company on hydraulic control
valves and hydraulic transmission lines. Eventually, Zweig switched to studies
of Doppler navigation systems and Doppler-inertial systems. His research was
applied to the U2 spy plane, which used a Doppler navigation system, and in the
1960s he worked on inertial guidance systems for Apollo spacecraft.
Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Sept. 25, 1916, Felix Zweig came to Yale on an
academic scholarship during the Great Depression. When he arrived as a freshman
in 1934, he had previously spent only one day outside his home county. His class
was among the first to occupy Timothy Dwight College, where Zweig was later a
fellow and an air raid warden during World War II while working on missile inertial
guidance systems and other scientific projects in the war effort. During the
war, he also taught electrical engineering courses to the many students who entered
Yale under the Navy V-12 program.
When the five engineering departments that constituted the Yale School of Engineering
were merged into the Department of Engineering and Applied Science in 1960, Zweig — who
was appointed dean of the School of Engineering by President Kingman Brewster
in 1961 — became the first and only person to hold the combined titles
of dean of engineering and chair of the Department of Engineering and Applied
Science.
“During his tenure as dean and chair, engineering and applied sciences
acquired many new and respected scholars and moved into Becton Center,” says
Paul Fleury, dean of the Faculty of Engineering. “His impact is still very
much felt in Yale engineering today.”
In subsequent years at Yale, Zweig acted as director of graduate studies and
as director of undergraduate studies both in engineering and applied science.
He was also director of undergraduate studies in electrical engineering. When
he retired in 1987 after more than five decades at the University, he was commended
for his citizenship and steadfastness.
“It would be impossible to think of his life without immediately summoning
to mind the inestimable contributions Yale made to him and to us throughout his
53 years on campus,” says Zweig’s son David, who is a member of the
Yale Class of 1977. “After family, Yale University and its engineering
department were the pillars of my father’s life.”
Zweig is also survived by his wife of 61 years, Jeanne; and two other sons, Jonathan
and Richard (Yale ’73) Zweig.
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Campus Notes
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