Samuel Jefferson Mason

Who was Samuel Jefferson Mason?

Samuel Jefferson Mason was an American electronics engineer. Mason's invariant and Mason's rule are named after him.

He was born in New York City, but he grew up in a small town in New Jersey. It was so small, in fact, that it only had a population of 26. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Rutgers University in 1942, and after graduation, he joined the Antenna Group of MIT Radiation Laboratory as a staff member. Mason went on to earn his S.M. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1947 and 1952, respectively. After World War II, the Radiation Laboratory was renamed the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, where he became the associate director in 1967. Mason served on the faculty of MIT from 1949 until his death in 1974 – as an assistant professor in 1949, associate professor in 1954, and full professor in 1959. Mason unexpectedly died in 1974 due to a cerebral hemorrhage.

Mason's doctoral dissertation, supervised by Ernst Guillemin, was on signal-flow graphs and he is often credited with inventing them.