Peter J. Kindlmann

 

Peter Kindlmann earned his B.S. in physics from Columbia University in 1962, came to Yale University for his M.S. in physics in 1964 and earned his doctorate in Engineering and Applied Science in 1966. While still a graduate student, he founded Yale’s first university-wide laboratory for the custom design of research instrumentation, with a budget of $75,000 (1965 dollars) and a staff of six. This lab, with Kindlmann as director, operated continuously from 1965 to 1979 providing unique electronic instrumentation services to the Yale community in physical, chemical, biological, and medical research.

 

In 1979, Kindlmann was appointed Associate Professor (Adjunct) in the Yale Electrical Engineering Department. His time was split between teaching at Yale and as president of Congruent Design, Inc., a private consulting group he founded that specialized in industrial instrumentation and product design. In 1991, Kindlmann became a full Professor (Adjunct) and his Yale affiliation began as Director of the Morse Teaching Center, the main teaching labs for Electrical Engineering, on whose design he had collaborated with the architects in 1987-88, and as Director of Undergraduate Studies for Electrical Engineering from 1999 to 2004. In 1998, he received the Sheffield Distinguished Teaching Award. In presenting this award to Kindlmann, then Dean Allan Bromley commented, “His love for science and technology is contagious and a vital hallmark of his teaching.”

 

According to Kindlmann, synthesis of the realms of industry and of academia in engineering teaching, particularly of design, succeeds best when that syntheses resides largely within the instructor. The instructors’ viewpoints should subsume experience with a wide range of industrial situations that combine personal experience with academic research and the practice of teaching. This blend of qualifications is regrettably rare, because of the preemptive demands of either industry or academia individually. Peter Kindlmann feels he has been able to manage the straddle to usefully merge his industrial and academic experiences. His industrial design benefits from his proximity to the rich pool of ideas and analytical thinking in the academic research community and its literature. Yale has benefited in that every circuit, instrument, or measurement concept he has ever taught about, or used in collaboration with Yale researchers, has at some point met the challenges of industrial realities.

 

He is the holder or contributor to 19 patents covering electromagnetic casting, related process devices, and electronic instrumentation, as well as consumer electronics (including the first Timex Indiglo patent.) Until 2007, he taught popular courses in electrical engineering at Yale, with emphasis on product and instrumentation design.

 

After 42 years working and teaching at Yale, in 2008, he phased into retirement with only 30% of his time devoted to Yale. He still consults for industry on a modest scale, and increasingly devotes himself to photography. He writes a provocative blog site EAS-INFO, with commentary on the interaction of technology, education, and culture in our ever more interconnected world.

 

As a rare double winner of YSEA awards, Peter Kindlmann reflected, in his acceptance remarks in 2008, on his career and his “personal quest in straddling industry and academia.” He believes students benefit from instructors who “draw both on experience in industrial situations and on experience with academic processes of teaching and learning.” He encourages students to do a job well and to live a life with skill. He believes that restoring “craftsmanship” to engineering is important for pride in self and for recognition by others of unusual skills that will benefit our increasingly unified world society.

 

Yale students, for decades have recognized Peter as a legend on campus whose stimulating lectures, fascinating experiments, and practical mentoring has led many to satisfying and successful careers.