William McMurray

Biography

William McMurray was born on August 15th of 1929. He earned his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Battersea Polytechnic in London, England, in 1950. And he eared a MS in Electrical Engineering from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1956. Mr. McMurray spent the lion’s share of his career with the General Electric Company, where he worked from 1953 until 1988. There he developed solid state electric power control and conversion circuits, including the well-known “McMurray Commutation Circuit as well as rectifiers, inverters, and dc converters using thyristors and transistors. He also worked in the areas of advanced power systems, motor drives, and computer simulation of converter circuits.

Over his lifetime he accumulated more than 20 patents, authored one book, The Theory and Design of Cyclo-converters (1972), and co-authored another, Principles of Inverter Circuits. Mr McMurray was awarded the William E. Newell award of the Power Electronics Specialists conference for outstanding achievement in power electronics. He was a member of IEEE and in 1984 was awarded the IEEE Lamme Medal for his lifetime contributions to the field.

William McMurray died in 2006.