The "Yellow Peril" and After [Historical Perspectives]

John F. Coales was a remarkable contributor to the field of control engineering with a wide scope of activities in the profession until his death in 1999 at the age of 92. Following his undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge, he devoted his engineering talents to radio direction finding and radar while working for various agencies of the British government. This work was instrumental in the defense of Great Britain during World War II. At the end of the war, he was employed in British engineering industries and in 1953 accepted an offer from the Engineering Department of Cambridge University to create and head a graduate teaching and research program in advanced automatic control systems. His career included many honors and leadership positions such as a term as president of the IEE. An oral history of John Coales may be found in the IEEE Global History Network [1].