Arthur "Bill" Guy

Dr. Arthur William “Bill” Guy passed away on April 20, 2014 in Seattle, WA. Bill was born in Helena, MT, on December 10, 1928. From 1947 to 1950 he served in the U.S. Air Force as a radar technician, and he was called back to duty as a reservist in the Korean War from 1951 to 1952. In 1952, Bill married Vivian Ruth Walker in Havre, Montana, and they raised four children in Seattle.

On the GI Bill, he received B.S. (1955), M.S. (1957), and Ph.D. (1966) degrees, all in electrical engineering, from the University of Washington, Seattle. His Ph.D. research entailed a multi-month sojourn in the Antarctic, leading to the development, construction, and establishment of the electrical properties of a 33.5 km long dipole antenna buried at the surface of the 2.5 km thick ice cap near Byrd Station, Antarctica. The antenna became a tool for continuing research on the ionosphere over the polar regions (http://www.washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1960g.html).

In 1966, Dr. Guy joined the University of Washington faculty of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine where he served until he retired from the University in 1991. During that period, he became a Professor in the Center for Bioengineering, with a joint appointment as Professor in Rehabilitation Medicine and Adjunct Professor in Electrical Engineering. During his tenure, Dr. Guy was Director of the Bioelectromagnetics Research Laboratory and was involved in teaching and research in the area of biological effects and medical applications of electromagnetic energy.

When it came to Bill’s hobbies, he was more than an enthusiast; his hobbies were a way of life. Bill was an avid fisherman; he loved to hike and fish in the Montana and Washington wilderness regions as well as the Kamloops area in British Columbia, Canada, with Vivian and their children, brothers Ed and Bob, as well as other relatives and friends. In his later years, he organized annual four-wheel-drive trips into those areas, including many trips to Darkhorse Lake in Montana. Bill’s interest and skill in photography and home-video production provided thorough documentation of fishing success, dispelling any suspicion of exaggeration. At 13, Bill was building his own radios, later becoming a ham radio operator. He communicated with people all over the world and had a regular schedule for talking to his father in Montana and his longtime friend, Bob Tighe, in Washington. Bill had a successful and blissful retirement; he smiled a lot, and he was always on a learning curve keeping his computer hardware and software state of the art and up to date. With his children and grandchildren, he was a great teacher, story-teller, and practical joker, providing many happy and humorous memories. Dr. Guy was a Fellow of the AAAS and the IEEE. He was a charter member and former President of the Bioelectromagnetics Society and received the 1987 d’Arsonval award. Dr. Guy served on the IEEE ANSI committee that developed the protection guides for human exposures to radio-frequency fields in 1974 and 1982. As a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) specializing in nonionizing radiation, Dr. Guy contributed to Report 67 on RF EM Fields–Properties, Quantities and Units which provided a perspective for quantitatively relating a biological effect to a particular exposure and sought to instill rigor into the definitions of fundamental quantities and units for nonionizing radiation. He also served on many other governmental groups and committees on biological effects and exposure standards for nonionizing radiation. Dr. Guy was on the editorial boards of the Journal of Microwave Power and IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. He held memberships in Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi and Sigma XI. He has published 171 papers in the scientific literature. After retiring from the University, he continued to work as the principal of BioEM Consulting through 2005.

Bill was preceded in death by his parents, Arthur Jack Guy and Evelyn Hebb Guy, and his sister Lois Johnson. Bill is survived by his wife of 62 years, Vivian; his siblings Bob Guy (Ollie May “Pinky”), Francis Whitaker (Fudd), Ed Guy, and Geri Fearn (Jim); his four children, Bill Guy (Kim), Sandra Zimmerman (Terry), Fred Guy (Beth), and Arla Guy (Ming Li); five grandchildren, Sarah Woodall (Cobey), Virdie Guy, Monika Rueb (Brian), Amanda Guy (Adam Beebe), and William Li; and three great-grandchildren, Bradyn Rueb, Maddy Rueb, and Jack Beebe.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to UW Bioengineering.

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