I was sad to learn that Ned Rasor passed away due to Covid this past New Year's Eve. I have been lucky to know a number of very smart people in my life, and Ned was truly a genius.
Ned was famous for creating thermionic energy conversion. Actually, Thomas Edison discovered it first, but did not know what it was. He saw that the glass near the carbon filaments of his early light bulbs turned black after a while, but didn't know why. So he called it the "Edison Effect," naturally enough, but did not really explain what it was or how it happened. It turns out that his light bulbs operated on DC voltage, and the negative part of the hot carbon filament emitted electrons and gave off carbon ions when positive ions impacted it. The carbon would deposit on the glass part of the bulb. The use of heat to boil of electrons came to be known as thermionic emission, and Ned became one of the world's greatest experts on the subject.
Ned figured, if he had a tube filled with radioactive nuclear fuel, it would start to emit electrons, and he could collect the electrons and make electricity! So thus was born the thermionic nuclear reactor. Every time he came up with a solution there was a problem, but he came up with a counter solution, and a counter-counter solution, and after a while the darn thing started to work. Companies and governments around the world stared to actually make these nuclear reactors for spacecraft that were intended to go to the moon or Mars, or deep space.
All this happened in the 1950s and 1960s, before my time. I met him around 1980. I once introduced him to a colleague as the "Granddaddy of thermionics," and that made him a little mad.
"Elliot, I'm too young to be the Granddaddy!" he protested. So from then on I called him the Uncle of Thermionics. That seemed to satisfy him.
Ned and several other scientists including myself shared a common vision that thermionic version should be an international effort among the nuclear spacefaring nations, much like fusion energy and the International Space Station.
Despite that common vision, Ned and I used to squabble all the time. As I saw it, Thermionics was his baby--er, niece--and as she grew she started to take on a personality of her own and grow in ways that he could not have predicted. Just as it is tough for a parent to let go of a child, an inventor has a hard time seeing the child form new relationships that do not involve Uncle. That said, I am certain that Ned would have a different interpretation, and it might not be flattering to me.
Nevertheless, Ned's technology was an amazing success. Our colleagues in Russia had announced in in the late 1980s that they had launched a thermionic nuclear reactor into outer space.
This sent shock waves through the American aerospace establishment. Many of them couldn't believe Rasor's invention actually worked. Others could not believe the Russian scientists were so far ahead of the Americans. It always sucks in this business when you say something can't be done, and then someone hauls off and does it, and then launches it into outer space, while you are still arguing why it is impossible.
But Ned really, truly did not regard it as a personal victory. He told me, "Elliot, I designed those devices 25 years ago. They are old fashioned to me now. Boring! We can do better now. I want to see a new generation of thermionic converters being used."
Ned did many other things as well. For example, once he made a thermionic pacemaker with a nuclear power source, and tested it in a dog named "Tick" that he eventually adopted as a pet. He had several other medical devices that just sort of popped into his consciousness and became inventions, without his really having intentionally set out to be a medical instrumentation specialist.
I'll tell one silly story about Ned. One time we were at a conference in the former Republic of Georgia, right at the time when the Soviet Union was dissolving and currency exchange rates were very favorable for Americans. So we had the chance to tour the local marketplace. We came upon a local stand where they were selling jewelry, to my uneducated eye somewhat similar to a Middle Eastern kind of style. We were not experts, but we could tell, they were real gemstones, but were being sold for prices that made no sense, like only a few dollars.
Ned looked them over and said, "Wow, this stuff is really cheap! Maybe I should buy some for Genny."
It was always so clear that Ned really loved and revered his wife Genny. He was always thinking of her when he was away.
I said, "Ned, I know you are a genius and know far more than me....but I believe I know Genny well enough to say if you find a present for her, it should have some other attribute besides being really cheap!"
Ned laughed and agreed, and admitted he had no aesthetic sense for what constituted fashionable jewelry. For once he took my advice.
Ned had unbelievable energy and enthusiasm for science and research, and was able to attract some of the smartest--and nicest--people to work for him.
I continued to follow his recent papers with interest. Even in his retirement, he was creating new ways to make thermionic converters operate more efficiently. I think some of them might work, too.
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