The
Stanford Department of Electrical Engineering, also known as
EE; Double E, is a department at Stanford University. Established in 1894, it is one of nine engineering departments that comprise the school of engineering, and in 1971, had the largest graduate enrollment of any department at Stanford University. The department is currently located in the David Packard Building on Jane Stanford Way in
Stanford, California.
History Early developments (1800s–1940s) Stanford University opened in 1891, and within the year, courses addressing topics such as electrical currents and magnetism were being taught by professors such as A.P. Carman. Professor Frederic A.C. Perrine was the first faculty to teach the subject of electrical engineering at Stanford, in 1893. Frederic A.C. Perrine, in 1893, made an acknowledgement of gifts to Stanford's Electrical Engineering Department in
The Stanford Daily, among them 30 horse power double reduction street-railroad motor, field magnets, and various machines from the
General Electric Company and wires from American Electrical Works and
New England Butt Company. Prior to 1894, electrical engineering had been taught as part of the Physics and Mechanical Engineering curriculum. That year, the EE Department was established in the Engineering Labs. In January 1894, the electrical engineering department proposed building an
electrical railroad from the university to
Palo Alto. Perrine gave the project to students, with the land having been purchased by private owners prior for a railroad that had fallen through. The design proposed no overhead wires, with the plant to be owned by Stanford University, and the engineering and management to be entirely constructed by the different engineering departments at Stanford. A
telegraph office was set up in the Electrical Engineering building in 1897 to act as an operator for the
Western Union Company. In 1898, it was reported that Perrine was taking a two-year leave of absence from teaching, but would continue to reside in
Palo Alto and would still have charge of the electrical engineering department. With the advancement of electricity, industry and employment opportunities proved plentiful for those with knowledge in the subject. In 1899, Standard Electrical Company completed one of the world's longest transmission lines. Professor FAC Perrine was the engineer, and the following year, he left academia for industry. When Perrine left in 1898, the department was administered instead by civil or mechanical engineering professors instead until 1905. In 1919,
Leonard F. Fuller earned a PhD degree at Stanford's electrical engineering department. Primary faculty of the EE department as of 1923 included Ryan as professor, J.C. Clark as associate professor, H.H. Henline as assistant professor, and two instructors. Henline started the communications laboratory in 1924.
Government contracts (1940s–1960s) According to historian
Piero Scaruffi, in 1946,
Frederick E. Terman became dean of Stanford's engineering school, using his connections with the military and the
Office of Naval Research to both start and fund the Electronics Research Lab (ERL). The Korean War in 1950 brought in a new infusion of funds from the Office of Naval Research, and Terman used the money to open the Applied Electronics Library, then opening the adjacent
Stanford Industrial Park nearby for private business. Terman served as head of the electrical engineering department and dean of the school of engineering until he retired in 1965. Meanwhile,
Hugh H. Skilling served as the executive head of the electrical engineering department from 1944 to 1967. In 1947, E. Ginzton in the EE department helped design and build the first
Linear Accelerator. Also that year, a Joint Services Electronics Contract was signed, with the department stating on its website that the contract started "large scale Federal support of Department Research." In January 1969, chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department
John Linvill stated that the department would allow the enrollment of "minority group" students to study for advanced degrees in electrical engineering. In the Gibbons Plan, the students were only allowed partial credits, with their studies financed by their external employers. On April 3, 1969, 700 students voted to occupy the AEL. This formed the April Third Movement, a coalition of Stanford campus organizations, occupied the Applied Electronics Laboratory for nine days, in protest for Stanford doing classified work for the government. 1400 Stanford community members signed a statement of participation. At the time, the lab was linked with classified military electronics research and electronic warfare being used against the Vietnamese people. The students of the April Third Movement occupied the hallways of the Applied Electronics Lab building, shutting down research for the occupation. Students slept on the roof of the lab, with large nightly meetings. The group also used the publishing materials in the basement to product documents linking Stanford trustees to defense contractors. In 1969, Stanford EE classes were broadcast to
Silicon Valley by the
Stanford Instructional Television Network for the first time. The department is currently based out of the David Packard Building on Jane Stanford Way in
Stanford, California. Degree programs offer some flexible options, such as coterminal BS and MS degrees completed in 5 years. The department has two joint degree programs. The joint EE MS/MBA degree is managed in conjunction with the
Stanford Graduate School of Business. The JD/EE MS degree is managed in conjunction with the
Stanford Law School. The department also offers online graduate certificates, and non-degree options (NDO) with four online certificate programs for graduate-level courses. • Information Systems & Science • Hardware/Software Systems • Physical Technology & Science • (Interdisciplinary) Energy • (Interdisciplinary) Biomedical
Published work In late 2021 a team in the department was working on ultra-thin solar cell technology, publishing in
Nature Communications in December 2021, with co-authors including Nassiri Nazif and Alwin Daus. In December 2022,
Yecun Wu of the department was a co-author of
Observation of an intermediate state during lithium intercalation of twisted bilayer MoS2 published in
Nature.
Notable faculty and alumni ==See also==