Silicon Valley Engineering
Hall of Fame for 1999

Jane G. Evans earned her Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Rice University and worked at Union Carbide, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and the National Reactor Testing Station. When she moved to the Bay Area, she quickly realized the importance of electronics and became the first woman to graduate in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State University.

Mrs. Evans subsequently was the first woman engineering graduate to be hired by Hewlett-Packard. For twenty-five years, she played a significant role in HP’s rise as a global provider of electronics and computers. Her projects included the first atomic clock, several instruments and RTE, a real time operating system. She established programs for marketing these products and personally introduced the technology to hundreds of engineers and customers. Finally, she led the way in the philanthropy department, providing modern equipment to many colleges and universities. She has been a role model to countless engineers, women and men, exemplifying the best of the profession.

Jane G. Evans has been an active leader of IEEE, serving in local, regional, and national levels. Most recently she was Chair of the Board of Directors of the 1997 WESCON meetings. Under her leadership, this meeting was the first held in the Silicon Valley.

Mrs. Evans is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of Women Engineers. She has received the IEEE’s Centennial Medal, the Career Action Center’s Woman of Vision Award, San Jose State University’s Engineering Award of Distinction and the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County’s World of Today and Tomorrow Award.

Dr. James M. Hait
Inventor, Innovator, Designer and former Chairman of FMC

James M. Hait was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey. Not wanting to be a dairyman, he went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and in 1928 graduated with a BSME, in 1962, RPI award him a Doctor of Engineering (Honorary ) degree. He started his career with Peerless Pump in Los Angeles and soon became Chief Engineer and the inventor of significant improvements in the efficiency of deep well turbine pumps. In 1932, FMC acquired Peerless and Jim Hait started his 44 year career with FMC. During World War II he led FMC’s efforts to develop and manufacture 30,000 of the famed Water Buffalo amphibious vehicles for the Navy and Marines.

In 1946, he was appointed Corporate Director of Engineering and established FMC’s Central Engineering Laboratory in San Jose, which was responsible for developing technology and products for FMC’s non-defense Machinery Divisions.

With the onset of the Korean War, he was instrumental in founding FMC’s Ordinance Division which over the years developed and manufactured thousands of armored amphibious vehicles and other military equipment for the armed forces. In 1956, Hait became Executive Vice President of FMC, President in 1960 and Chairman in 1966. He was inducted into the Army’s Ordinance Hall of Fame in 1981.

He has actively supported his profession and the community. He is a member and Fellow of ASME, member of SAE and the National Academy of Engineering. He has served on the boards of seven companies, and on the advisory boards of Stanford, Santa Clara University, and Cal Tech. He was a mentor to many young engineers. Even with his increasing management responsibilities, he continued to invent and has been issued 76 patents in a widely diversified range of machinery products.

Dr. Bernard Widrow
Professor of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Bernard Widrow is Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. His fields of teaching and research are signal processing, neural networks, acoustics, and control systems. Before coming to Stanford in 1959, he taught at MIT where he received the Doctor of Science Degree in 1956. Dr. Widrow is the author of two books: “Adaptive Signal Processing,” and “Adaptive Inverse Control,” both published by Prentice-Hall. Each is the first of its kind, establishing new fields of research and engineering that are being pursued worldwide by students, faculty, and practicing engineers.

Dr. Widrow is the inventor or co-inventor of 17 patents. One of his inventions, an adaptive filter based on the LMS (least mean square) algorithm, is used in almost all the computer modems in the world, making high-speed digital communications (such as the internet) possible. He is co-inventor of a directional hearing aid that will enable many people with severe to profound hearing loss to regain speech recognition and communication ability. Dr. Widrow has started Cardinal Sound Labs to develop and commercialize the technology.

He has been honored many times for his research. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), elected him a Fellow in 1976. In 1984, he received the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1995.

Dr. Widrow is currently supervising ten doctoral students at Stanford. Over the years, more than sixty students have completed their Ph.D.’s under his supervision. Many of his former students have become founders and top scientists in Silicon Valley companies. About ten have become university professors, four have gone on to medical school and become MD’s, and two have become Admirals in the U. S. Navy.