Engineering Memory of the Month

Listening in on lightning

Feeling a bit of a January chill? It’s probably nothing compared to what Robert Helliwell, electrical engineering professor emeritus, felt as he pioneered the department’s research program in Antarctica.

Beginning in the 1950s and continuing today, Stanford electrical engineers have been investigating Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio waves as a means of remotely sensing the properties of near-earth space. The VLF waves originate in sources in the Northern hemisphere and travel to Antarctica along magnetic field lines of the Earth that reach peak altitudes of tens of thousands of kilometers. Among the most interesting signals are “whistlers,” which start as impulsive signals from lightning flashes. By the time they get to Antarctica, they have become spread out and sound something like a slide whistle in Helliwell’s Antarctic receivers.

In recognition of his work, the National Science Foundation in January 1966 named a range of Antarctic hills the Helliwell Hills. They are shown in the undated aerial photo above. Inset is a picture of Helliwell from 1957 appropriately dressed for an upcoming Antarctic expedition. Other Stanford electrical engineering professors have also had frosty real estate named for them. Don Carpenter has an ice island and the late John Katsufrakis has a 12,000-foot mountain.

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