Publication: A Princeton Companion
Willis, Clodius Harris (1893-1964), first Arthur Le Grand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering, was a Virginian who did his undergraduate work at the University of Richmond and took his Ph.D. in physics and electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins. He came to Princeton in 1926 during the formative years of the School of Engineering and, as a teacher for thirty-two years and departmental chairman for fourteen, was influential in developing the School's basic concepts of engineering education.
During most of his career, he was consultant to the research laboratories of the General Electric Company, and, for several years, to the Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission. He held thirty-five patents relating to electronic power converters, and was one of the first to recognize, in the 1930s, the advantages of using direct current for the long-range transmission of electric power.
Professor Willis's introductory course in the principles of electrical engineering, required of all engineering students regardless of department, was frequently voted the most popular course in the School of Engineering. His tests were noted for their toughness but, as one student said, his ``cheerful countenance and rosy smile never failed to win back your confidence after an hour's struggle with heavy formulas.''
During World War II he supervised four teaching programs that operated concurrently but on different schedules: Army, Navy, and civilian programs at the undergraduate level, and a postgraduate program that graduated 790 Navy radar officers. He also intensified his advisory work and his consultation with the government. After the war he began to suffer from Parkinson's disease, which compelled him to curtail his activities. He gave up the chairmanship of the department in 1950 and retired from teaching at the age of 65 in 1958.
At his death in 1964, his colleagues paid him this tribute:
``Clodius Willis believed that engineering as an applied science should be based upon central principles and concepts rather than upon mere collection of facts, and that it must, therefore, have at its base a sound knowledge of mathematics and the pure sciences, tempered with a true insight into . . . the humanities and the social sciences. When the scientific and technological explosions of recent years revealed deficiencies in engineering education in the country at large, Princeton required no revolution in its way of doing things. Instead it had only to press more rapidly the evolution of its original principles established years ago by a small group of wise men. Clodius Willis was a leading member of this distinguished group.''
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).