Tim Hooper - biographical

I am a retired electrical engineer. My wife Lois finds the retired bit a little hard to believe, as I am still as busy as ever.

My engineering career has been involved with telecommunications, first in industry, and later as a senior lecturer in Communications within the Department of Communications of the School of Electrical Engineering at The University of New South Wales.

industrial career

After graduation (Sydney University) I spent five years (1950-55) working in the single channel VHF radio division of British Telecommunications Research Ltd at Taplow Court, in England. There I was under the inspired guidance of Michael Otto Felix, to whom I shall be forever grateful.

On returning to Australia I remained in industry for a further five years, then returned to University (UNSW) where I was a member of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering until retiring in 1986.

research activities

While at UNSW my research activities were concerned with the computer aided design of analog filters. I developed a suite of programs for the joint (simultaneous) optimization of two or more filter parameters. In particular these activities were directed towards the approximation of filters having linear (equiripple) phase or group delay characteristics.

Considerable success was achieved, due in great measure to the support and encouragement of my colleague and mentor Dr. Bob Radzyner, also a senior lecturer at UNSW.

teaching activities

My teaching activities at UNSW were concerned with analog communications.

To support my lectures I developed a communications teaching laboratory. From that, in the mid-1970s, came the Telecommunications Instructional Modelling System, the initials of which, appropriately enough, happen to be TIMS.

TIMS is now in use at Universities throughout the world.

retirement activities

I am kept busy writing University course material in support of TIMS.

Time is also spent attending to enquiries generated by this site.

recreational activities

For fun and excitement I build and fly radio controlled model aircraft. For cognoscenti this mostly takes the form of combat slope soaring in the summer, and electric ducted fan jets in the winter.

I also enjoy listening to modern jazz - provided I can hear a keyboard in there somewhere. I myself play a Yamaha Tyros keyboard.

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