Oral History: David Leeson (2016)

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1937, David B. Leeson, an IEEE Life Fellow, received his Ph.D. from Stanford University (Hughes Fellow) in 1962, M.S. from MIT (NSF Fellow), and B.S. from Caltech. He is consulting professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, serves as a director for wireless companies, and is executive officer of Leeson Foundation. Leeson has written a book on Yagi antennas and published seminal IEEE papers on nonlinear frequency multipliers, radar, and oscillator stability (“Leeson’s Model of Oscillator Noise”). In 2001, he received the IEEE UFFC W. G. Cady Award "for clear physical insight and model of the effects of noise on oscillators" and was a member of IEEE Standards committees for wireless networking and frequency stability. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and Sigma Xi.

In 1962, Leeson earned his doctorate and took a job at Hughes Aircraft Co. where he spent two years working on Doppler radar and space satellites. He was a known commodity at Hughes Aircraft Co. because at the age of eighteen he started working at the defense contractor during summers and vacations throughout his college years. He returned to Silicon Valley and worked for a startup, Applied Technology, but he left to start his own company. Leeson was founding chair and CEO of California Microwave, Inc. from 1968 to 1993. Then he joined the Stanford University faculty in 1994. Currently, his research interests include microwave communications, entrepreneurship, and history. He is also an avid radio amateur (W6NL) and passionate about sports car racing and design.