Russell Harrison Varian (April 24, 1898 – July 28, 1959) and Sigurd Fergus Varian (May 4, 1901 – October 18, 1961) were American brothers who founded one of the earliest high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. Born to theosophist parents who helped lead the utopian community of Halcyon, California, they grew up in a home with multiple creative influences. The brothers showed an early interest in electricity, and after independently establishing careers in electronics and aviation they came together to invent the klystron, which became a critical component of radar, telecommunications and other microwave technologies.
In 1948 they founded Varian Associates to market the klystron and other inventions; the company became the first to move into Stanford Industrial Park, the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Both brothers were noted for their progressive political views; Russell was a lifelong supporter of the Sierra Club, Sigurd helped found the housing cooperative of Ladera, California, and Varian Associates instituted innovative employee policies that were ahead of their time. In 1950, the Varians were awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal for the development of the klystron, and both were posthumously inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame in 1993.
Childhood The Varian brothers' parents, John and Agnes Varian, were born and raised in Ireland, and were members of the Theosophical Society in Dublin. They emigrated to the United States in 1894, and settled in Syracuse, New York, where they became involved with a theosophical group headed by William Dower. After Dower moved to Halcyon, California, they joined him in 1914, shortly after Halcyon's founding. It was a utopian community that included a sanatorium for the treatment of liquor, morphine, and opium addiction, with socialist leanings and some communal property. John Varian became a leader of the Temple of the People at Halcyon, worked as a chiropractor and masseur, wrote theosophist poetry and socialist tracts, and pursued an interest in Irish myth and history. Agnes was the first Halcyon storekeeper and postmistress.
John and Agnes had three sons, Russell, Sigurd and Eric. The family was not wealthy, but noted in the community for being loving, humorous and adventurous. All three boys exhibited an early fascination with electricity, which included pranks such as attaching electrical outlets to bed springs and door knobs to give visitors minor electric shocks. Russell was named in honor of the poet "Æ", George Russell, whom John had befriended in Ireland. Russell was dyslexic, and in his childhood he was considered by many to be "slow", although later events would demonstrate the true extent of his intellect; Sigurd was the more outgoing of the older two siblings.
Composer Henry Cowell befriended Russell in 1911, when both were in their teens. A piano sonata that Cowell composed for Russell brought Cowell to the attention of John Varian, who, in 1917, asked Cowell to write the prelude for a stage production of John's Irish mythical poetry cycle, The Building of Banba. This piece, titled The Tides of Manaunaun, became Cowell's most famous and widely performed work.
Cowell was also a music tutor of Ansel Adams, and the Varian family in turn became friends with Adams, who became friends with Russell and Sigurd through their mutual activity in the Sierra Club. Adams knew the family for more than 30 years, and was a hiking companion of Russell's; the pair made many trips into the Sierras. Adams later used a line from one of John Varian's poems, "...What Majestic Word", as the title of his 1963 Portfolio Four, which he dedicated to Russell's memory. The portfolio, of which only 200 copies were printed, was narrated with the words of John and Russell Varian, and sold as a fundraiser for the Sierra Club.
Careers Russell earned bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Stanford University, compensating for his learning disabilities with what was described as hard work and "sheer force of will". Because of his reading and math difficulties, he took six years to graduate, switching from social sciences to physics. His application to the PhD program at Stanford was rejected. He completed his master's degree in 1927, and went to work at Humble Oil, staying there for five months and receiving a patent for a vibrating magnetometer. Later he went to work in the San Francisco area and was introduced to television technology through a job with Philo Farnsworth.
Sigurd attended California Polytechnic State University, but, mostly owing to boredom, dropped out and never completed a college degree. Through much of his career, Sigurd was periodically ill because of tuberculosis. After a brief stint working for Southern California Edison Company stringing power lines, he took flying lessons and became a pilot, airplane mechanic, and self-taught engineer. He worked as a barnstormer and later as a pilot for Pan American Airways, at a time when the company developed new routes into Latin America. Sigurd was one of the pilots Pan Am selected for their first flights to Mexico and Central America, and while working as an airline captain, he lived in Mexico from 1929 to 1934. From this experience, he discovered many problems with existing maps, finding, for example, that some Mexican charts showed swamps where there were actually mountains. He also realized how difficult it was to land safely or to detect other planes at night or when it was overcast. As a result, he was very familiar with the inadequacies of existing navigational equipment and became interested in ways to make flying safer.
In the early 1930s, in addition to a strong interest in navigation, Sigurd became concerned about the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the political situation in Spain. His experience as a pilot in Central and South America made him particularly aware of the vulnerability of the Panama Canal to enemy attack, as he believed it was relatively simple to fly over a military target at night or in heavy overcast sky in the absence of a defense warning system. Edward Ginzton, who later helped the brothers establish Varian Associates, stated: "[Sigurd] felt that Hitler could easily establish bases in Central America, from which his planes could fly into the United States at night, or at low elevations, and drop bombs, without ever being detected."
Working together Sigurd was interested in all-weather navigation systems, and suggested to Russell that together they could create a radio-based technology using microwaves that could detect airplanes at night or in clouds. Russell agreed, and they both quit their jobs, set up their own lab at Halcyon, and began developing plans for a device that could precisely determine the location and direction of an airplane. They initially attempted to create a radio compass, but could not develop a successful design, partly as a consequence of their isolation. They ultimately sought assistance from Russell's college roommate, William Webster Hansen, who was by then a professor at Stanford. With Hansen's help, they came to the attention of the head of the Stanford physics department, David Webster, who hired them in 1936 to work at the university in exchange for lab space, $100 a year for supplies, and an agreement that Stanford University would have half of the royalties for any patents they obtained.
After several rejected models, Russell devised a way to use velocity modulation to allow electrons to flow in bunches and to control their speed. The concept of velocity modulation he used had already been described by A. Arsenjewa Heil and Oskar Heil in 1935, though the Varians were unlikely to have known of the work. The brothers and Hansen ultimately created the klystron, the first tube that could generate electromagnetic waves at microwave frequencies. Russell was responsible for the design and Sigurd built the first prototype, which was completed in August 1937.
The klystron, a microwave tube, was noticed in 1938 by Sperry Gyroscope, who gave the Varian brothers and Hansen a contract to do further work. The Varians did not know that the British were also working on early radar technology, which by then could detect submarines, but could not be made light enough to use in airplanes. Upon publication of a paper in 1939, news of the klystron quickly influenced the work of US and British researchers working on radar technology. Thereafter, klystron equipment was set up in Boston in 1939, and with it, successful blind-landing tests of airplanes were completed. The Varians moved to the East Coast in 1940 to work for Sperry, where wartime development of the microwave tube continued. Though little is known of their work in this period (because they were presumably working on classified projects), it appears that they directed Sperry's vacuum tube and radar work during World War II. The US and Britain were able to use this technology to create radar equipment light and compact enough to fit into aircraft, which was credited with helping the Allies win the war.
Post-war The Varian brothers and their associates individually left Sperry and returned to the West Coast between 1945 and 1948. After the war, the klystron became an important component in the further development of radar and the microwave industry. It was used in broadcast television and in the development of various telecommunications technologies. In 1950, the Varians were awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute "in recognition of their foresight ... energy and technical insight in developing ... the klystron". Klystron technology was still being used in 1993 in UHF television, the free-electron laser, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Each brother developed other inventions. Russell gained patents for technology related to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), as used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), thermionic tubes, and various radar technologies. Sigurd's inventions, some of which he patented, included a system of pumps, filters, and heaters for his swimming pool, as well as a high-speed drill press. Sigurd also led projects that built models and prototypes to develop Russell's concepts into usable products. Russell was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He was also named alumnus of the year by California State Polytechnic College for inventing the Klystron.
Today, the Russell Varian Prize, sponsored by Agilent Technologies (Varian, Inc. prior to 2010), honors the memory of Russell Varian and recognizes "innovative contributions of high and broad impact on state-of-the-art NMR technology", and carries with it a prize of €15,000. It is presented annually at EUROMAR, the annual joint conference of the European magnetic resonance scientific community, including the UK Royal Society of Chemistry NMR group, AMPERE Congress, and the European Experimental NMR Conference (EENC). The American Vacuum Society instituted the Russell and Sigurd Varian Award in 1983 for continuing graduate students to honor the Varian brothers.
Varian Associates