Oswald G. Villard Jr., 87; Over-the-Horizon Radar Developer

Oswald Garrison Villard Jr., 87, a pioneer in the development of over-the-horizon radar, died Jan. 7 in a Palo Alto nursing home of pneumonia.

Villard taught at Stanford University for five decades and from 1958 to 1972 directed its RadioScience Laboratory -- predecessor of the current Space, Telecommunications and Radioscience Laboratory (STARLab). By reflecting radio waves from meteor trails, he became the first U.S. scientist to “hear” meteors in 1945 and was able to clock a 1948 Perseid meteor shower at 133,200 mph.

But Villard was perhaps best known for developing over-the-horizon radar. By bouncing high-frequency radar signals off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, he could extend radar beyond the line of sight to detect aircraft and missiles around the curve of the Earth.

He achieved the breakthrough in 1959. A decade later, when Stanford ceased all classified research in response to anti-Vietnam War protests, he moved his studies to the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park. He went on to develop “stealth” technologies to thwart enemy detection of aircraft and submarines.

Born in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., Villard earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature at Yale University and then switched to engineering for his graduate degrees at Stanford. He taught at Stanford from 1946 until retiring in 1987, but continued guiding graduate students and conducting research until his death.