Frederick Terman

Frederick Emmons Terman (June 7, 1900 – December 19, 1982) was an American academic. He is widely credited (together with William Shockley) with being the father of Silicon Valley. Quotes But in the 1950s, many universities saw an advantage in building up all of the sciences and engineering with an eye toward obtaining federal grant money. No single institution did this better than Stanford University. And no one person was more attuned to using federal grants to build a university than its dean of engineering and eventual provost, Frederick Terman. Dr. Terman, trained as an electrical engineer, was an aggressive man with insight and boundless energy. When he began as dean, Stanford University was considered a good private regional school. When he retired as provost, it was arguably the best university for research in the nation. Stuart Rojstaczer Gone for Good: Tales of University Life after the Golden Age https://books.google.com/books?id=z3sdGcopBzQC&pg=PA75 2 September 1999 Oxford University Press 978-0-19-535205-4 75 It is better to have one seven-foot jumper on your team than any number of six-foot jumpers. as quoted in his Biography, at the Guide to the Frederick Emmons Terman Papers, Stanford University. Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives. I most enjoy helping to build something up, taking an unformulated enterprise and making it into what it could become. as quoted in his Biography, at the Guide to the Frederick Emmons Terman Papers, Stanford University. Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives. I have a theory on how you build excellence. It is that you do it by building steeples of excellence in a faculty. You take some things, topics that are of first, great importance and you make them be strong, very good in them. You don't have many of these. You don't have to build very many steeples. But the ones that you do build, you want to make them very good and push them very high. You don't have to have a lot of faculty members in a steeple. Two or three really good ones. See it doesn't matter massive numbers in the faculty. It's who they are, not how many they are. Frederick Terman Portrait of a pioneer: Fred Terman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_BdyI1F5RI&t=1062s 1984 Stanford University Libraries 17:43 External links Category:Engineers from the United States Category:1900 births Category:1982 deaths Category:People from Indiana Category:National Medal of Science laureates Category:Stanford University alumni Category:Stanford University faculty Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty