Victor Wouk

Victor Wouk, b. 27 Apr 1919, NYC.He married Joy Lattman on 15 Jun 1941 in NYC, daughter of Jacob Lattman and Yetta Schwartz. Notes for Victor Wouk:Graduate of Townsend Harris -- where he was able to bring in Robert Goddard, the rocket pioneer, for a lecture. Going to Cal Tech for Electro-physics was very unusual for a Jew -- father was skeptical. Worked on the Manhattan District doing instrumentation for attempts to enrich Uranium. Founded Beta Electric. Was president of Wouka Distributing. Pioneer, visionary, and, later, world-class expert of electric and hybrid vehicles. Board of 92 Street Y. Chair Comm. on Synagogue Relations for Fed. of Jew. Phil. Children of Victor Wouk and Joy Lattman are:

6.Jonathan Abraham Wouk, b. 19 , NYC.

6.+Jordan Samuel Wouk, b. 2 Oct 1948, NYC. . He married Kathy Anne King on 30 May 1976 in Great Neck, NY, daughter of Edward King and Rita Darling Gilman. Notes for Jordan Samuel Wouk:

Worked as a computer professional. Worked on the Y2k (year 2000) problem.

Active in his community including serving on the Planning Board. Founder of the Friends of the Hackensack River Greenway through Teaneck.

More About Jordan Samuel Wouk:Coll 1: 1974 - 1976, MIT. Coll 2: 1967 - 1969, Wesleyan Univ. Hebrew: Yaakov Shmuel. Children of Jordan Samuel Wouk and Kathy Anne King are:

7. Edward Howard Wouk, b. 21 Jul 1980.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Wouk

Father of the modern hybrid car dies

Associated Press

NEW YORK - Victor Wouk, an electrical engineer and entrepreneur who

developed the first full-size version of the modern hybrid car, has

died. He was 86.

Wouk died of cancer at his New York City home on May 19, his son Jordan

told the Los Angeles Times for a story in Sunday's editions.

Described as the father of modern hybrid automobile programs, Wouk held

more than 10 patents, most of them related to hybrid and electric

vehicles. In the early 1970s, he formed his own company, Petro-Electric

Motors, to develop a hybrid vehicle for the federal government.

Would said his work was spurred by the Clean Air Act, passed by

Congress in 1970, which called for the development of a car engine that

could eliminate 90 percent of the pollutants then being emitted by

engines.

Wouk and friends invested about $300,000 into the project and he and a

partner, Charles Rosen, modified a 1972 Buick Skylark with a rotary

engine and an electric motor that supplied peak power when needed.

"We built the first full-powered, full sized hybrid vehicle," Wouk said

in a 2004 interview. "Nobody had taken a full-sized passenger car and

made a hybrid out of it."

The car proved effective in independent lab tests. It met the strictest

emission standards, got 30 miles to a gallon of gas and its top speed

was 85 mph. Nevertheless, it failed the Environmental Protection

Agency's tests.

Petro-Electric folded in the 1970s and Wouk became a consultant and

remained a booster for hybrid cars. He believed Toyota's 1997

introduction of a gasoline-electric car was affirmation of his life's

work, said son Jordan.

Besides his son Jordan, who lives in Teaneck, N.J., he is survived by his wife of 63 years, Joy; another son, Jonathan, of Ottawa; a grandson; and a brother, the novelist Herman Wouk

Victor Wouk was born in the South Bronx, in New York City, in 1919. After completing elementary school, he entered Townsend Harris High

School—described by Wouk as "unequivocally elitist"—from which he gained a strong interest in science and mathematics. This interest

continued upon entering Columbia University in 1935, though in his junior year, after becoming fascinated by the new medium of television,

he decided to specialize in electrical engineering. Receiving his bachelor's degree from Columbia (1939), Wouk then traveled to the West

Coast, and specifically the California Institute of Technology for his master's (1940) and doctoral degrees (1942). There, with its new

state-of-the-art high voltage laboratory, Wouk's interest in and skill at electrical engineering blossomed.

After completing his PhD Wouk went to work at the Westingthouse Research Laboratories, where, because of his expertise in high voltage

and power, he was put to work on the ionic centrifuge in order to separate Uranium 235 for the Manhattan District Project. Following the war

he returned to his "first love," television, working with North American Philips in New York to develop a 25,000 volt power supply for operating

their projection tube. Seeing an opportunity in the industry, Wouk then formed his own company, Beta Electric, in the early 1950s that was

soon doing $1 million in sales producing high powered test equipment. Bought out by Sorenson and Company in 1956, Wouk then became

Sorenson's chief engineer of their power supply section and worked on such projects as high power semiconductors. Eager to develop even

more sophisticated equipment, Wouk formed the Electronic Energy Conversion Corporation in 1959. With their light weight, low volume and

high intensity, his power conditioning units became sought after in the computer industry and in military aviation.

Such was Wouk's reputation in electricity that Russell Feldman, a founder of Motorola, approached Wouk with a query concerning the

feasibility of building a viable electronic vehicle for the commercial market. Wouk was able to improve the performance of the prototype,

but—after consulting with Linus Pauling and others at Caltech—determined that without a radically better battery the best way forward would

be to develop a hybrid electric vehicle. The timing of these events was coincident with new studies about the detrimental effects of smog and,

in 1968, new emissions legislation. With the Federal Clean Car Incentive Program in the early 1970s the government sponsored Wouk's

attempt—under the corporate name of Petro-Electric Motors—to develop a hybrid vehicle. Choosing to use a modified Buick Skylark, he and

Charles Rosen constructed a parallel-type electric motor that ran in concert with a Mazda RX2 rotary engine.

Although Petro-Electric Motors managed to fabricate a low polluting vehicle with twice the fuel economy, various bureaucratic and technical

issues, as well as political pressures, stymied their project. Not until the advent of the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight did the hybrid vehicle

become a marketable commodity. (Nevertheless, Wouk satisfyingly proclaimed, "On the electric vehicle thing I'm very proud that I made a

pain in the ass of myself for the last twenty years now about the hybrid."). For this reason Wouk returned to consulting in 1976, working on

electric and hybrid vehicles for the Department of Energy, Tennessee Valley Authority, Booz-Allen, and NASA-Lewis amongst others. He

also designed the electric bus system was the representative of the United to the International Electrotechnical Commission committee on

electric and hybrid vehicles (IEC TC 69).

Other interests—businesses and otherwise— consumed Victor's time. One such is "Wouka Industries," a seafood import business created by

his father and for which Victor became president. As well as managing the daily affairs of the company, Wouk worked out a number of

ingenious methods to streamline the various processes. He also applied for and received many patents, including a chopper-dropper-booster

circuit and an incandescent lamp life extender. His extensive correspondence with his famous brother Herman reveals a host of other

concerns, ranging from literature and philately, to space travel and the state of Jewish intellectual life.

During his career Wouk was an inexhaustible communicator. He published over one hundred articles and has given nearly 150 talks to

expert and lay audiences. His correspondence is vast and his "letters to the editor" innumerable. The latter also evince the diversity of

interests. Despite the gargantuan amount of energy that Wouk put into the development of electric and hybrid vehicles, the range of his

activities in both professional and "private" life has remained extraordinarily large. Much of this diversity has been by way of the societies to

which Wouk has belonged: among the organizations in which Wouk has actively participated is the New York Academy of Sciences, the

American Institute for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers (IEEE). As an alumnus and Associate, he remains energetically involved in all sorts of issues relating to the California Institute of

Technology.

Except for his years at Caltech, Victor spent most of his life in New York's environs, residing with his wife, Joy, in an apartment on Park

Avenue in Manhattan. He died at the age of 86 on May 19, 2005.