Fred Terman was the fourth Dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford, serving from 1944-1958, leaving only to become Provost of the University. He is generally credited - along with President Wally Sterling - as leading Stanford to its present position among the top universities of the world.

Terman was the son of a world-famous Stanford Professor, the creator of the well-known Stanford-Binet IQ test. The younger Terman received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1924, but soon contracted tuberculosis requiring a year's convalescence. During that year, Terman returned home to Stanford to teach and begin a book on radio engineering. That book became the first in a long series of volumes to emanate from the pens of Terman and the Stanford engineering faculty that have shaped electrical engineering education in the decades since.

Fred Terman would have been famous if only as a writer of outstanding engineering textbooks, but during World War II he also directed the Radio Research Lab at Harvard in developing electronic countermeasures - leadership that would earn him the Presidential Medal of Merit.

Returning to Stanford after the war, Terman was named Dean of the School of Engineering where he created a new approach to graduate education. Terman recognized that government support of basic research and graduate study would become key for universities. He foresaw as well that the local high-technology industry could provide financial assistance, intellectual support, and professional stimulation for both faculty and students. Later, as Provost between 1955 and 1965 he helped jumpstart Silicon Valley by leasing land to high-tech companies which thrived on the steady flow of talented graduates from Stanford School of Engineering.

AB '20 Chemistry
ENG '22 Electrical Engineering
Professor: 1925-1965
Dean: 1944-1958
Provost: 1955-1965
1900-1982