predecessor successor death_date birth_place office birth_date order term_start article_title term_end name alma_mater
john robert evans david strangway 16 september 1997 coboconk , ontario president of the university of toronto september 21 , 1920 10th 1978 james milton ham
 1983 james ham university of toronto massachusetts institute of technology
james milton ham

james milton ham , -lrb- september 21 , 1920 -- september 16 , 1997 -rrb- was a canadian engineer , university administrator and the tenth president of the university of toronto .
born in coboconk , ontario , ham attended runnymede collegiate institute and received a b.a.sc .
degree from the university of toronto in 1943 .
he then joined the royal canadian navy as an electrical officer .
after the second world war , he was a lecturer and housemaster in the ajax division of the university of toronto .
in 1946 , he left to study at the massachusetts institute of technology where he received an s.m. degree in 1947 and an sc.d .
degree in 1952 .
he was a research associate from 1949 to 1951 and was assistant professor of electrical engineering from 1951 to 1952 .
in 1953 , he returned to the university of toronto as associate professor of electrical engineering , becoming professor in 1959 .
he headed the department of electrical engineering in 1964 , before becoming the dean of the faculty of applied science and engineering in 1966 and the dean of graduate studies in 1976 .
he served as president of the university of toronto from 1978 to 1983 .
he was appointed president emeritus in 1988 .
ham was a canadian pioneer in the teaching and promotion of research in the field of automatic control .
he supervised the first doctoral students in that field at a canadian university .
he initiated the associate committee on automatic control of the national research council of canada and chaired that committee from 1959 to 1964 .
he was a member of the executive committee of the international federation of automatic control from 1966 to 1972 .
he was also an enthusiastic teacher of the fundamental principles of electrical engineering and was the author , with gordon slemon , of a textbook on that topic .
