Doherty's Legacy

Review article, 2016

William H. Doherty was an American electrical engineer, best known for his invention of the Doherty amplifier. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1907, Doherty attended Harvard University, where he received his bachelor's degree in communication engineering (1927) and his master's degree in engineering (1928). He then joined the American Telegraph and Telephone Company Long Lines Department in Boston. He remained there for a few months before joining the National Bureau of Standards, where he researched radio phenomena. Doherty joined Bell Telephone Laboratories (now Bell Labs) in 1929 and, while there, worked on the development of high power radio transmitters that were used for transoceanic radio telephones and broadcasting.