Oral History: Charles Maerfeld (2017)

Charles Maerfeld was born on April 29, 1940 in Paris.

He got his engineering degree from “L’Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles” in Paris (1964).

He also got a master degree in Economic Science from Paris University. Later, he transformed an original work on SAW multistrip couplers into a PhD Thesis at Nice University.

He has a long history in SAW activities. His pioneering works started as early as 1969 as he made the first experimental demonstration of the Bleustein Gulyaev wave. He demonstrated the existence of a New Shear Interfacial Wave now called the Maerfeld-Tournois Wave. His detailed analysis of the functioning of the Multistrip Coupler led to the invention of a beam width compressor that he used to build an efficient SAW Convolver.

From this basic research position, he gradually moved into a management one and was in charge of the development of the SAW activity as well as the multi-elements probes for Ultrasonic Imaging systems inside his Company.

This Activity developed primarily components for military applications basically pulse compression radars. But at the end of the 80’s its central part switched to the telecom domain and produced hundreds of millions of SAW filters for the booming mobile phone market. Finally, he was the Chairman and CEO of a Company in charge of SAW and multi-transducer probes for Medical Ultrasound scanners: Thales Microsonics.

He was an active member of IEEE on Sonics and Ultrasonics. He was granted the Fellow grade at the beginning of the 90’s and was elected member of the AdCom in 1989. He organized the first Ultrasonic Symposium ever held outside America in Cannes in 1994, and was the recipient of the Achievement Awards of this section.