Noted antenna engineer, Alan Boswell of Great Baddow, Essex, UK, died August 5, 2015 at Broomfield Hospital. His funeral was on August 20 at Chelmsford Crematorium. Should you wish to make a charitable donation in his memory, two charities that were close to Alan’s heart are the British Lung Foundation and Children with Cancer. Thanks to his sister, Nora, for reaching out to friends and acquaintances with the sad news. An amateur radio operator (G3NOQ), the Radio Society of Great Britain acknowledged Alan’s ‘silent key’ in a recent obituary.
I never met Alan in person, yet I have enormous respect for him. He was a brilliant and talented man. I learned some fascinating things about antennas from him, and I admire his work very much. A recent paper on losses in electrically small loops (regretably, behind an IEEE paywall) to which he contributed was very useful. He also assisted Princeton physicist, Kirk McDonald, on some fascinating work tracing energy flow around antennas.
Alan was kind enough to share his thoughts on my UWB antenna book earlier this summer. Even where we disagreed, he was always scrupulously evenhanded in analyzing my ideas, and he raised worthwhile points in criticism. I’m honored to have known him and benefited from my interactions with him. He will be missed.
