Southworth was born in
Little Cooley, Pennsylvania, graduated in 1914 with a physics degree from
Grove City College, and studied one year at
Columbia University. In June 1917 he joined the
National Bureau of Standards, then in 1918 moved to
Yale University to teach in a
Signal Corps school. He remained at Yale to complete a doctorate in 1923 on the measurement of the
dielectric constant of water at frequencies above 15 MHz. Southworth left Yale for a position with the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, where he first helped edit the
Bell System Technical Journal, but then switched to researching
shortwave radio propagation. In 1931 he began to study wave propagation in dielectric rods, by early 1932 observed wave propagation in a water-filled copper pipe, and by May 1933 transmitted waves through air-filled copper pipes up to 20 feet in length. (He later recalled that the first message sent through a waveguide was "Send Money.") After he constructed a 5-in.-diameter
waveguide with a length of 875 feet, the project was moved to the
Bell Telephone Laboratories in
Holmdel, New Jersey, where he spent the rest of his career until retirement in 1955. Southworth received the
Morris N. Liebmann Award in 1938, and the
IEEE Medal of Honor in 1963 "For pioneering contributions to microwave radio physics, to
radio astronomy, and to waveguide transmission." == Selected works ==