James Brown Fisk

James Brown Fisk (born August 30, 1910, West Warwick, Rhode Island, U.S.—died August 10, 1981, Elizabethtown, New York) was an American physicist who, as an electronic research engineer at Bell Laboratories, helped develop microwave magnetrons for high-frequency radar during World War II.

At age 17, Fisk entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), where he went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering (1931) and a doctorate in theoretical physics (1935). His Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “The Scattering of Electrons from Molecules. ” Fisk joined Bell Laboratories in 1939 and served as its president from 1959 to 1973. Under his leadership research teams developed the transistor, industrial lasers, and satellite communications systems. Fisk established a reputation as a tough negotiator and on more than one occasion left Bell to serve the United States government. Under U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Fisk headed a U.S. government scientific delegation that negotiated nuclear disarmament with U.S.S.R. Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. He also served under U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1947 Fisk was named first director of the division of research of the Atomic Energy Commission, but he resigned in 1948 to become Gordon McKay Professor at Harvard University. In 1973, a year before his retirement, Fisk became chairman of the board of Bell Laboratories.