Terahertz Pioneer: David H. Auston

T HE year was 1963. A bright and adventurous young radio astronomy student just out of a Masters program at University of Toronto, immediately raises his hand when asked by a visiting recruiter if anyone in the graduating class would like to move to California. David H. Auston1 does the exact opposite of what many young American men are doing at the time. Rather than moving to Canada from the United States to avoid a very unpopular military draft that sent thousands to a war across the Pacific, he comes, with his wife and daughter, to Santa Barbara, CA, to work at the General Motors Defense Research Laboratory. With a background in physics and astronomy as well as electrical engineering, and some summer experience working at Canadair, Montreal, Canada, (now part of Bombardier Aerospace) on microwave radar domes, Auston’s first projects at GM involved designing microwave resonators for applications in plasma diagnostics [1]. One of the benefits of working for GM at the time was the opportunity to pursue graduate studies, and Dr. Auston was fortunate to earn both a scholarship and a spot in UC Berkeley working with Professor John Whinnery (co-author with Simon Ramo of, Fields and Waves in Modern Radio, Wiley, 1953). Dr. Whinnery had a strong influence on the young Auston, in terms of his hands-on interactions with his students, background in RF, and growing interest in lasers, which were just beginning to become “the” hot new field in physics. Professor Whinnery had even spent a recent sabbatical at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, in order to help with a transition into laser science. As a consequence, Dr. Auston too began working on gas lasers and, as part of his thesis, developed a novel fast scanning HeNe system using collective transverse modes [2]. After completing his dissertation, Dr. Auston had the enviable opportunity to join a group of 120 enthusiastic research Ph.D.’s that were offered start up packages at Bell Laboratories. In 1966 he made the cross country trip to Murray Hill, NJ, where he was given a lab, an assistant, a budget, and simply asked to “do something original.” At the time this mandate seemed a bit daunting to an individual just starting out on a research career path, but in