O. Thomas and Martha S. Purl Scholarship

Established 1995

Tom Purl entered the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois in 1941. In March 1943 he entered the U. S. Army Air Corps Meteorological Program, served as a weather officer, and was discharged in September 1946. He returned to the University of Illinois and in January 1948 received a B.S. in General Engineering. He worked a year and a half for Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In September 1949 he returned to the University of Illinois Electrical Engineering Department. He received a B. S. in 1951, an M. S. in 1952, and a Ph. D. in 1955.

He was with Hughes Research Labs at Culver City, California, from 1955 to 1958; his last position was Head of the High-Power Traveling Wave Tube Section. In September 1958 Tom joined Watkins-Johnson Company at Palo Alto, California in the Devices Group, which is responsible for research, development, and manufacturing of electron devices and components. He has authored several technical publications and holds several patents in traveling wave tube technology.

He and his wife Martha lived in Menlo Park, California. They have a son, Tom, and a daughter, Jeanne. Tom passed away in 2016.

Description:

These scholarships are given by O. Thomas Purl and his wife Martha to recognize outstanding students in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The recipients must be juniors or seniors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign enrolled in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the top 10% of their class. Creative and scientific leadership are also to be taken into consideration. The option to renew will be decided by the ECE Scholarship Committee.

Award:

The recipient(s) will be recognized at the annual spring ECE Awards and Recognition Banquet. All student recipients are featured on the second floor of the ECE Building's Student Honors Wall. 

Past Recipients of the Award