Department Chair: 1975-1991
J.O. Kopplin came to Iowa State in 1975 as an electrical engineering professor and department chair. Kopplin specialized in superconductivity, electric and magnetic properties of materials, and liquid and solid surface phenomena. He led the department during a time of difficult federal and state budget cuts. He encouraged the department to more aggressively seek funding from industry and private sources. He retired in 1991.
Before coming to Iowa State, Kopplin worked in private industry and academia. He was an instructor in electrical engineering at Purdue (1954 to 1958), assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1958 to 1961 and 1962 to 1968), a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1961 to 1962), and electrical engineering professor and department head at the University of Texas-El Paso (1968 to 1975).
Kopplin earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1949), and master’s (1954) and doctorate (1959) degrees from Purdue University.