Ernst Julius Berg

American electrical engineer

Ernst Julius Berg (9 Feb. 1871 - 1941) was a Swedish-born, American electrical engineer.

Biography

Ernst Julius Berg was born in Östersund, Jämtland County in Sweden. After graduating from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1892, he immigrated to the United States. He began working as an assistant to Charles Proteus Steinmetz at General Electric. He then joined the faculty of electrical engineering at Union College.

In 1909, he became head of electrical engineering department at the University of Illinois. Berg remained as department head until June 1913, when he resigned and returned to his former positions with General Electric Company and with Union College. He was associated with Union College until his death in 1941. A pioneer of radio, he produced the first two-way radio voice program in the United States. In the field of theoretical analysis of electrical circuits, he popularized Oliver Heaviside's technique of operational calculus.

In 1906 he married Gwendoline O'Brien. He is buried in Vale Cemetery in Schenectady, New York.

Works

1900: (with Charles Proteus Steinmetz) Theory and calculations of Alternating Current Phenomena, Electrical World and Engineer
1908: Electrical energy, its generation, transmission, and utilization, McGraw Hill
1916: Electrical Engineering, first course, McGraw Hill
1916: Electrical Engineering, advanced course, McGraw Hill
1929: Heaviside's Operational Calculus as Applied to Engineering and Physics, McGraw Hill via Internet Archive

References

S. Hensel (1994) Ernst Julius Berg Educator and Proselytizer of Heaviside's Calculus, IEEE Potentials, 13, 57.
R.R. Kline (1988) The General Electric professorship at Union College, 1903-41, IEEE Transactions on Education 31, 141.
Benson, Adolph B. & Naboth Hedin (1969) Swedes In America, New York: Haskel House Publishers