James E. Boyd

Education

Boyd was born to Emory Fortson and Rosa Lee (née Wright) Boyd on July 18, 1906, in Tignall, Georgia, a small town near the eastern border of the state of Georgia. He had two brothers, John and Ellis, and a sister, Sophia. In 1927, he received a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from the University of Georgia, where he was a member of an honor society, Phi Beta Kappa. In 1928, he received a Master of Arts in mathematics from Duke University. From 1928 to 1930, Boyd was an instructor of physics at the University of Georgia. He entered graduate school at Yale University in 1930, and was a graduate assistant there from 1930 to 1931 and a Loomis Fellow from 1931 to 1933. He received his PhD in physics from Yale in 1933, with a thesis entitled Scattering of X-Rays by Cold-Worked and by Annealed Beryllium. In his thesis, Boyd described the effects of reflecting radiation through samples of powdered, cold-worked and annealed beryllium with differing particle sizes. The experiment showed that beryllium crystals are "rather imperfect", that annealing caused "no appreciable change" in beryllium's lattice structure, and that the mass absorption coefficient of beryllium found in the experiment was reasonably close to the theoretical value calculated using Compton's empirical formula.

Boyd was appointed as head of the Mathematics and Science Department at West Georgia College in 1933. In 1935, he joined the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of physics. Boyd married Elizabeth Reynolds Cobb, daughter of Betty Reynolds Cobb and Hiram Felix Cobb, on June 2, 1934. James and Elizabeth went on to have two children: a daughter, Betty Cobb Boyd (born August 26, 1939) and a son, James Fortson Boyd (born October 9, 1942). With World War II under way, Boyd joined the United States Navy in 1942, serving as a lieutenant and later lieutenant commander in the Bureau of Ordnance, performing research on radar. From 1945 to 1946, he was a commander in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations where he worked on radar and electronics.

West Georgia College president

Boyd became the third president of West Georgia College in 1961 after William H. Row died of a heart attack. Boyd is most known for his peaceful racial integration of the campus (without waiting for a court order) in 1963 by inviting a young black woman, Lillian Williams, to attend the college; she eventually earned two degrees in education and in 1985 received the college's highest honor, the Founder's Award. In May 1964, Boyd invited Robert F. Kennedy to the dedication of the campus chapel as the Kennedy Chapel, which was named after Robert's brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated in November 1963. During his visit, Robert Kennedy promoted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was then under debate in the United States Senate.

Boyd dramatically expanded the college during his tenure, both in terms of headcount and academic diversity. Enrolment grew from 1,089 students upon his arrival in 1961 to 5,503 students on his departure in 1971. In 1959, there were two degrees and five programs available; in 1969–70 there were seven degrees and 45 programs. There were 94 graduate students in 1961; the first master's programs were offered in 1967, and by 1969 the number of graduate students had risen to 741. In 1969 alone, 80 new faculty members were hired, a number larger than the total number of faculty members a decade earlier. Several new buildings were constructed, including nine dormitories and five academic buildings. Policy changes occurred as well: in 1966, the curfew for junior and senior women was abolished, and fraternities and sororities were allowed on campus. In 1970, Boyd was named the University System of Georgia's first vice chancellor for academic development, effective once his successor (Emory graduate Ward B. Pafford) was appointed in 1971.

Researcher and entrepreneur

In 1946, Boyd returned to Georgia Tech's physics department and its Engineering Experiment Station, where he worked as Assistant Project Director under Frank Lawrence (and, after Lawrence's departure, as Project Director) on an Army Air Corps-sponsored project studying microwave propagation. As part of the project, he conducted long-range line-of-sight experiments between Georgia Tech and Mount Oglethorpe in North Georgia. In 1947, Boyd co-authored a study entitled Propagation Studies of Electromagnetic Waves, which resulted in a series of related research contracts, including a large one obtained from the Navy Bureau of Ordnance on radar-directed fire control. Boyd was promoted to professor of physics in 1948. Around 1950, under the authority of his rank of commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, Boyd created a U.S. Navy Research Reserve Unit at Georgia Tech that included officers from both Georgia Tech and the Atlanta metropolitan area. In the 1950s, Boyd was promoted to captain and ran this unit until his departure from Georgia Tech.

In 1950, Boyd was named the first head of the newly created Physics Division of the Engineering Experiment Station (now known as the Georgia Tech Research Institute). Boyd recruited his former student Glen P. Robinson to the station. In late 1951, Robinson, station director Gerald Rosselot and Boyd helped start Scientific Associates (now Scientific Atlanta, part of Cisco) with $700 in seed money to produce and market antenna products that were developed at the station, as the station's leadership did not think Georgia Tech should be involved in the manufacturing business. Georgia Tech vice president Cherry Emerson believed that EES employees' affiliation with Scientific Atlanta constituted a conflict of interest and asked Boyd, Rosselot, and Robinson to choose between the two organizations. Boyd resigned from his post at Scientific Atlanta and remained with Georgia Tech, but chose to retain his position on Scientific Atlanta's Board of Directors. According to Robinson, "Dr. Boyd is really considered the founder of Scientific Atlanta."