Biography of Mervyn Blythe Broughton
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By means of the Blythe Broughton Award of Merit of the IEEE Central Canada Area, IEEE Canada commemorates contributions to the development of the Eastern Canada Area (formerly Council). See the list of recipients of the M.B. Broughton Central Canada Merit Award.
Biography
Mervyn Blythe Broughton (1929-1995) was born in Corbetton, ON and was married with 4 sons. He received the B.Sc. degree in Radio Physics & Mathematics from the University of Western Ontario in 1954, the M.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1958 and the Ph.D. from Queen’s University in 1971, both in Electrical Engineering.
In 1964 he participated in the NSF Summer Institute on Advanced Control Systems at Utah State University. He worked as Instrumentation Engineer at Orenda Engineering (1954-5); as Analog Simulation Engineer for Computing Devices of Canada (1955-6); Systems Analyst at Canadian Armament Research & Development Establishment (1958-9) before joining RMC as Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1966 and Full Professor in 1979.
Dr. Broughton was a visiting lecturer in the Electrical Engineering Department at UBC (1969-70); Exchange Professor at RMCS, Shrivenham, England (1976-7); Visiting Research Professor at the US Naval Academy (1984-5); and Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy (1991-2).
He taught Automatic Control Systems, Electronic Circuits, Network Analysis, Dynamic Systems Simulation and Design, Power Electronics and Energy Conversion, Instrumentation and Measurement, and Optimization and Approximation at RMC. He was Chairman and Member of M.Eng. Examination Committees (1967-1993).
Dr. Broughton took part as chairman at various conferences/symposia in Canada and overseas. He had many papers in refereed scholarly journals and papers presented at major conferences and symposia and invited lectures. Blythe had 4 Canadian Patents for digital controllers. He had referee activities as external examiner and NSERC Application reviews; acted many times as reviewer for scholarly journals.
He had consulting activities to design and test a radar altimeter/automatic stabilization equipment interface unit to correct hover height drift in SeaKing helicopter 1980-1; MUSE Research on computer-controlled analogue filter 1994-5; temperature controller for airborne chamber for Nuclear Radiation Sensors, 1995.
IEEE Activities – Blythe was a Member of IRE 1952-62, Member of IEEE 1962, and Life Senior Member IEEE from 1993. He served as IRE/IEEE Student Branch Counsellor (1960-9), Chairman IRE Bay of Quinte Section 1962, Vice-Chair then Chair IEEE Region 7 Student Activities Committee (1966-70), Chair Kingston Section IEEE 1994-5.
