Biography

Ernst Julius Berg was born in Östersund

Östersund

Östersund is an urban area in Jämtland in the middle of Sweden. It is the seat of Östersund Municipality and the capital of Jämtland County. Östersund is located at the shores of Sweden's fifth largest lake, Storsjön, opposite the island Frösön, and is the only city in Jämtland. Östersund is the...

, Jämtland

Jämtland

Jämtland or Jamtland is a historical province or landskap in the center of Sweden in northern Europe. It borders to Härjedalen and Medelpad in the south, Ångermanland in the east, Lapland in the north and Trøndelag and Norway in the west...

 County in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. After graduating from the Royal Institute of Technology

Royal Institute of Technology

The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...

 in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 in 1892, he immigrated to the United States. He began working as an assistant to Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a German-American mathematician and electrical engineer. He fostered the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, formulating mathematical theories for engineers...

 at General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

. He then joined the faculty of electrical engineering at Union College

Union College

Union College is a private, non-denominational liberal arts college located in Schenectady, New York, United States. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. In the 19th century, it became the "Mother of Fraternities", as...

.

In 1909, he became head of electrical engineering department at the University of Illinois. Berg remained as department head until June 1913, when he resigned and returned to his former positions with General Electric Company and with Union College. He was associated with Union College until his death in 1941. A pioneer of radio, he produced the first two-way radio voice program in the United States. In the field of theoretical analysis of electrical circuits, he popularized Oliver Heaviside

Oliver Heaviside

Oliver Heaviside was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, invented mathematical techniques to the solution of differential equations , reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and...

's technique of operational calculus

Operational calculus

Operational calculus, also known as operational analysis, is a technique by which problems in analysis, in particular differential equations, are transformed into algebraic problems, usually the problem of solving a polynomial equation.-History:...

.

In 1906 he married Gwendoline O'Brien. He is buried in Vale Cemetery in Schenectady, New York

Schenectady, New York

Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...

.

Authorship

• Ernst Julius Berg and Charles Proteus Steinmetz
  Charles Proteus Steinmetz
  Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a German-American mathematician and electrical engineer. He fostered the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, formulating mathematical theories for engineers...
  
  ; Theory and calculations of Alternating Current Phenomena (Electrical World and Engineer, 1900)
• Electrical Engineering, first course (McGrawHill, NY,1916)
• Electrical Engineering, advanced course (McGrawHill,NY,1916)
• Electrical energy, its generation, transmission, and utilization (McGrawHill,NY, 1908)
• Heaviside's Operational Calculus as Applied to Engineering and Physics (McGrawHill, NY, 1936)

Archive

• Special Collections, Schaffer Library, Union College, Schenectady, New York
  Schenectady, New York
  Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...
  
  .
• University of Illinois Picture of EJ Berg

Sources

• S. Hensel, Ernst Julius Berg Educator and Proselytizer of Heaviside's Calculus IEEE Potentials, 13, 57 (1994).
• R.R. Kline The General Electric professorship at Union College, 1903-41 IEEE Transactions on education 31, 141 (1988).
• Benson, Adolph B.; Naboth Hedin Swedes In America (New York: Haskel House Publishers. 1969)