Louis D. Smullin; pioneered microwave, radar research

He died June 4 at his residence at Lasell House in Auburndale. He was 93 and had been in declining health since suffering a stroke in 2001.

Mr. Smullin was as well known for his pioneering work in lasers, microwaves, and fusion research as he was for his clever wordplay, love of literature, and entrancing storytelling.

He was also devoted to his family. “He would take us to his lab on Saturdays,’’ his daughter, Susan Jones of Belmont, remembered of her childhood with her three brothers. “Growing up with him was interesting and fun. He introduced us to all sorts of things.’’

Those things included his electrical engineering work in areas such as microwave technology, wave transference, and the widely remembered LunaSee experiment of 1962 with colleague Giorgio Fiocco, in which, for the first time, laser pulses were transmitted to the moon, and their return was detected.

Mr. Smullin also encouraged his children’s appreciation of language.

“He introduced us to poetry and books,’’ his daughter said. “He was the one who brought me home ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ . . . and Mad Magazine. We would do the New York Times crossword puzzle together - in ink. We would have races to see who could finish it first. . . . To this day, I am hooked on crossword puzzles.

“From him, we learned that we had to participate in things in order to get things done,’’ Jones said. “He gave us the sense that you have to be a lifelong learner.’’

Born in Detroit, Mr. Smullin took an early interest in the sciences and earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1936. He received a master of science degree in electrical engineering in 1939 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That same year, Mr. Smullin married Ruth Frankel, a 1936 graduate of what was then Radcliffe College in Cambridge. The two were introduced through a mutual cousin. Ruth became a teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind, now in Watertown. They would have celebrated their 70th anniversary on June 14.

Mr. Smullin spent the late 1930s and early 40s working his way through progressively challenging jobs, ranging from his work in the high voltage lab of the Ohio Brass Co. in Barbertown, Ohio, to design and testing of photomultiplier tubes for the Farnsworth Television Co. in Indiana.

By 1941, only three years out of graduate school, Mr. Smullin had become head of the transmit-receive and duplexer section of the MIT Radiation Laboratory. There, he oversaw development of methods for testing microwave transmit-receive tubes, which were integral to successful creation of the airborne radar system used by American warplanes in World War II. Many historians view the US military’s success with radar as a significant factor in the Allies gaining the upper hand in the war.

After leaving the MIT Radiation Lab for several years to lead a microwave research team at the Federal Telecommunications Laboratory in Nutley, N.J., Mr. Smullin returned to MIT in 1947 to spearhead the Institute’s Microwave Tube Laboratory. He helped to conceptualize and establish MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, the federally funded research and development center for advanced technology solutions. In 1952, Mr. Smullin became head of the radar and weapons division at Lincoln Lab.

He spent the next 30-plus years in research and teaching, including a fellowship to teach at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. He was an associate and later full professor of electrical engineering at MIT and spent nearly 10 years as department head.

“Lou was an enormous force at MIT, one of the people who championed the values that make this place great,’’ said Hal Abelson, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

Mr. Smullin retired from MIT in 1986 and became professor emeritus. He continued to ride his bike to the Institute daily, working in cold fusion research, until the time of his stroke.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Smullin leaves two sons, Joseph of Swampscott, and David of Bend, Ore.; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His son Frank died in 1983 of an aneurysm.

A memorial service is scheduled Aug. 10 at 2:30 p.m in the Grier Room, 50 Vassar St., at MIT.