John David Rhodes
Personal Information
Description
Professor John David Rhodes is best known for his analysis and design of microwave components and filters. David’s major contributions to this branch of electronics has not been confined to academic aspects of the topic. It encompasses new theory for filters and multiplexers, the practical implementation of their design in waveguide and microstrip form and the engineering development of such components — including new techniques for their industrial manufacture. He has made major contributions to circuit analysis and synthesis and was the first to synthesise the effective and hence very efficient class of microwave elliptic filters. The contributions also include the development of specialised software packages needed for computer-aided design of systems involving high mechanical tolerances required for operations at frequencies up to 100 gigahertz. Whilst still holding a chair at the University of Leeds, David formed his own company which now takes a leading role in the manufacture of multiplexers and filters to an international market. Such devices are now extensively used in communication satellites and military systems He has received the OBE (the Officer of the Order of the British Empire) and CBE (the Commander of the Order of the British Empire) from the Queen and also several Technology and Export Awards. From the University of Leeds he received the BSc. Ph.D., D.Sc. and Honorary D.Eng Degrees and further Honorary Degrees from Bradford and Napier Universities. He is a fellow of the IEEE, IET, Royal Academy of Engineering, The Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the Academy of Engineering (USA). He has been awarded numerous prizes including the Microwave Prize, the Browder J. Thompson Award, The Guillemin-Cauer Award and the Microwave Career Award all from the IEEE; The JJ Thomson Medal and the Faraday Medal from the IET; The Mountbatten Medal from the National Electronics Council; The Mullard Award from the Royal Society, and the premier distinction from the Royal Academy of Engineering, The Prince Philip Gold Medal. Many years ago he founded Filtronic plc and grew it into an international microwave company with 10 operations on 4 continents with peak sales of $0.5 B and a market capitalisation of $2.5 B. He retired 4 years ago and has grown a new business within the private company Isotek Electronics Ltd., where he is the majority shareholder, in the area of microwave sub-systems. Isotek Electronics Ltd. is currently being acquired by Filtronic plc. The remaining Isotek business, which develops and manufactures hyperbaric welding systems for sea depths down to 4000 m, continues to grow under his ownership. He is also an Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds.
Books
Stupendous, Miserable City
Tracing Pasolini's engagement with Rome and looking beyond his films to explore the interrelatedness of all of Pasolini's artistic output in the 1950s and 1960s, Rhodes opens up new ways of understanding Pasolini's work and proves how connected Pasolini was to the upheavals in Italy at the time.
Spectacle of property
Much of our time at the movies is spent in other peoples homes. Cinema is, after all, often about everyday life. Spectacle of Property is the first book to address the question of the ubiquitous conjuncture of the moving image and its domestic architecture. Arguing that in cinema we pay to occupy spaces we cannot occupy, John David Rhodes explores how the house in cinema both structures and criticizes fantasies of property and ownership. Rhodes tells the story of the ambivalent but powerful pleasure we take in looking at private property onscreen, analyzing the security and ease the house promises along with the horrible anxieties it produces. He begins by laying out a theory of film spectatorship that proposes the concept of the spectator-tenant,with reference to films such as Gone with the Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons. The book continues with three chapters that are each occupied with a different architectural style and the films that make use of it: the bungalow, the modernist house, and the shingle style house. Rhodes considers a variety of canonical films rarely analyzed side by side, such as Psycho in relation to Grey Gardens and Meet Me in St. Louis. Among the other films discussed are Meshes of the Afternoon, Mildred Pierce, A Star Is Born, Killer of Sheep, and A Single Man. Bringing together film history, film theory, and architectural history as no book has to date, Spectacle of Property marks a new milestone in examining cinemas relationship to realism while leaving us vastly more informed about, if less at home inside, the houses we occupy at the movies.
Antonioni
The cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) embodies - more than that of any other director - the substance of European art cinema. His intensely stylised, stylish, demanding and gratifying films continue to spark controversy and debate - and inspire intense allegiance. On the centenary of Antonioni's birth, this volume places his work in an expanded field in order to reassess his contribution and continued centrality to world cinema. The contributors to this volume argue for an understanding of his work in a variety of new contexts: transnational cinema; conceptual photography; intermediality; thing theory; ecological and climate change theory; rubbish theory; microhistorical urbanism; the theory of the picturesque; and the theory of style. The Antonioni that emerges across these essays is an artist profoundly engaged in formal experimentation and deeply embedded in the complexities of his cultural and historical moment, whose work, therefore, continues to offer itself as a rich resource for thinking through the contradictory conditions of late modernity in the twenty-first century.