Marion E. Hines

Marion E. Hines
Marion E. Hines
Bellingham, WA, USA
Associated organizations
Bell Labs
Fields of study
Communications, Radar
IEEE S-MTT Microwave Prize, IEEE Microwave Career Award, J. J. Ebers Award, IEEE Lamme Medal, IEEE Centennial Medal


Marion Hines was born on November 11 of 1920 in Bellingham, Washington. He earned his BS and MS from the California Institute of Technology and then became a weather officer for the US Army Air Force during World War II. Thereafter he joined Bell Laboratories, where he worked until 1960. At Bell Labs Mr. Hines developed microwave electron tubes, storage tubes, parametric amplifiers, tunnel diode devices and digital communications techniques. In 1957, Mr. Hines and H.E. Elder demonstrated the first negative resistance varactor parametric amplifier. He left Bell Labs in 1960 and became Vice President of Microwave Associates, Inc. where he was also the Chief Scientist of Research and Development, creating varactor harmonic generators, high power diode switches and phase shifters, diode oscillators, and amplifiers, ferrite devices and antennas. While at Microwave Associates, Hines helped create the first all-solid-state microwave communications system in the 1960s. In 1964 he published a important paper on microwave switching and phase shifting using semi-conductor diodes. This led to the development of practical pulsed mega-watt duplexers and multi-kilowatt phase shifters and power switches which were extensively used in radar.

From 1965 to 1974 Mr. Hines concentrated on IMPATT and Gunn-effect diodes, making important contributions to a quantitative understanding of their electron dynamics and to their application as microwave oscillators and amplifiers. These include the small-signal impendence theory, small signal noise, nonlinear effects in oscillators and power amplifiers and large signal noise, instabilities and intermodulation. After 1970 he diversified more and published on stripline propagation using ferrite, computer aided microwave network analysis, phase locked power amplification and mixer theory.

Mr. Hines was a Fellow of the IEEE and won the IEEE S-MTT Microwave prizes in 1972 and 1977. He also was awarded the IEEE Microwave Career Award in 1983 and the J. J. Ebers Award of the IEEE Electron Devices Society in 1975. He won the IEEE Lamme Medal in 1983 and the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984.