The varied careers of Kenneth L. Bowles

Abstract

It is not unusual for the careers of scientists and engineers to span a range of topics, driven by their insatiable curiosity about how things work, the fun they derive from problem solving, an aesthetic sense for “sweet solutions,” and a joy in sharing their knowledge with others. Few careers have spanned as wide a breadth, or better reflected the technological explosion in the second half of the 20th century, than that of Kenneth L. Bowles, who died in California on August 15, 2018. Bowles (“Ken” to everyone who knew him) began his career in experimental ionospheric physics and space science. In the course of pushing the bounds of early computers, he became passionate about moving computing off of large mainframes and onto small but powerful individual computers. In 1968 Ken became director of the computer center at University of California at San Diego (UCSD), and in 1974 began development of UCSD Pascal, the project for which he is best known. Ken went on to found a start-up that focused on developing the Ada computer language, and then in retirement became an accomplished wildflower photographer. Ken completed his doctorate at Cornell, in Ithaca, New York, under Henry G. Booker in 1955, using coherent backscatter radar to study the aurora borealis. He then joined the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory of the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS), in Boulder, Colorado. In the days before satellites, it was only possible to observe the bottom part of the ionosphere by using upward pointing radars called ionospheric sounders, which could trace out the density of free electrons up to the point of their highest concentration (the F-layer maximum at a height of around 400 kilometers). What did the upper ionosphere look like? How far out did it go? Cornell’s Bill Gordon (1) suggested that … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: granger.morgan{at}andrew.cmu.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1