Russell Cleven Coile
Russell Cleven Coile (1917-2011) was an American operations researcher.
Life
Russell Cleven Coile, Sr. was born on March 11, 1917 in Washington, DC. He earned a Bachelor’s degree and two graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, in Cambridge, MA, where he a student assistant working for Vannevar Bush on his microfilm rapid selector. He later received a PhD in Information Science from The City University, London, England.
He was a geophysical observer in an observatory in Peru. Coile served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II, and was the project officer for IFF, the transponder used in aircraft. When the U.S. Air Force was created in 1947, he transferred Air Force to continue his projects and retired from the USAF Reserve with the rank of Colonel.
After World War II, Coile he worked as an engineer on designing transmission antennas for radio and television. He then worked for 32 years on military Operations Research at the Center for Naval Analyses.
In 1982 he moved to the Monterey peninsula in California to be Chief Scientist at the Combat Development Experimentation Command at Ford Ord and Fort Hunter Liggett. He then became an emergency manager for local governments and an adjunct professor at the Naval Postgraduate School researching disaster response. He died on June 4, 2011 in Pacific Grove, California.
Contributions
Worked on Rapid Selector; Consultant; Worked in South America on geophysical research; Worked for Carnegie Institute in Washington after MIT; During the war worked on radar work, etc.; consulting work from years right after the war; Worked for Office of Naval Research for 15 years; worked at various companies and did consulting work (particularly disaster consulting) and published several books relating to disaster consulting.
Publications
Coile published an autobiography, DisasterMan (2009) and 142 professional papers, including:
- "Periodical literature for electronic engineers." Proceedings of the IRE 38, no. 12 (1950): 1380-1384.
- "Periodical literature for electrical engineers." Journal of Documentation 8, no. 4 (1952): 209-226.
- "Information sources for electrical and electronics engineers." IEEE Transactions on Engineering Writing and Speech 12, no. 3 (1969): 71-78.
- "Lotka and information science." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 26, no. 2 (1975): 133.
- "Lotka's frequency distribution of scientific productivity." Journal of the American Society for Information science 28, no. 6 (1977): 366-370.
- "The role of amateur radio in providing emergency electronic communication for disaster management." Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 6, no. 3 (1997): 176-185.
Further reading
- Autobiography: Disasterman : a biographical memoir. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse Inc., 2009.
- Russell Cleven Coile. Obituary. 2011. [1]
- "Russell C. Coile. Military rsearcher." Washington Post Obituary. July 2, 2011. [2]
- Coile, Ellen Miller. Under Two Flags: A Memoir. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2017 Autobiography by Coile's second wife.