Martin A. Uman

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Martin Allan Uman (born 1936) is an American engineer who is widely seen as a top expert on lightning. He is best known for lightning modeling, which applies electromagnetic theory to explain how lightning works. This work helped create practical tools like lightning locating systems and improved how we protect people and property from lightning hazards.

Uman co-founded Lightning Location and Protection, Inc. (LLP), a company that makes lightning locating equipment. LLP is now part of Vaisala and is a world leader in this field. He has written five books on lightning (all in revised second editions), a plasma physics book, and a lightning book co-authored with V. A. Rakov. He has written many chapters and encyclopedia articles on lightning, plus more than 265 journal papers and 342 other articles and reports. He also holds seven patents, six of them for lightning detection and location.

Education and early career: Uman was valedictorian of Henry B. Plant High School in Tampa, Florida, in 1953. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Princeton University in 1957, with Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi honors. He earned his MA in 1959 and PhD in 1961 at Princeton in electrical engineering; his dissertation was “The Behavior of Electrons in Certain Gas Mixtures.” In the late 1950s he held research positions at Sandia, Sperry Gyroscope, Forrestal Research Center, and Elcon Laboratory.

Academic career: From 1961 to 1965 he was an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Arizona, where he focused on electromagnetics, gaseous electronics, and lightning. From 1965 to 1971 he was a fellow physicist at Westinghouse Research Labs, studying lightning and long laboratory sparks. In 1971 he joined the University of Florida as a professor in electrical and computer engineering, eventually serving as department chair from 1991 to 2003 and becoming a Distinguished Professor in 2003. He has directed UF’s Lightning Research Laboratory since 1972.

LLP and later work: He co-founded LLP in 1975, serving as its president until 1983 and as vice president and chief consulting scientist from 1983 to 1995. LLP is now a division of Vaisala and remains a leader in lightning locating equipment.

Awards: Uman and the Galileo Probe Spacecraft Team received NASA Group Achievement Awards in 1992 and 1996.