Cross was a Master of Ferroelectric Materials
Cross, who was Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, came to Penn State in 1961, an Englishman who served in the British Admiralty during WWII where he formed part of the group using high frequency direction finding to track German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. Along with close friend and collaborator Robert Newnham, Cross developed the underwater sonar transducers that helped the U.S. Navy maintain its lead in the field throughout the Cold War. Also in
collaboration with Newnham, he was responsible for the transducers used in virtually all medical ultrasound devices. His first paper, “Optical Studies of Barium Titanate,” was published in the journal Nature in 1949. He published more than 850 papers in refereed journals, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1983, and received materials’ highest award, the Von Hipple Award, in 2010.