James Rautio

James C. Rautio started life on a farm and might still be there but for amateur radio. His father had a pre-World War II “homebrew rig” and James was intensely curious. This motivated him to get a ham license in 1969 and to become an electrical engineer. After high school, he worked for two years. Then, using savings, scholarships, and loans, he put himself through Cornell, receiving a BSEE in 1978. He then worked for General Electric Space Systems while completing a MS in Systems Engineering from University of Pennsylvania. While at Space Systems, James designed microwave circuits on Alumina, developed millimeter wave measurement equipment, and wrote circuit analysis software, in addition to completing GE’s prestigious ABC-Course/Edison Program.

In 1982, James transferred to GE Electronics Laboratory in Syracuse. Here he designed GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuits. He first pursued software development at home by starting Sonnet Software in 1983, and writing a simple antenna analysis program, Annie. Annie ran on the Apple ][+, Commodore 64, and IBM-PC. On the first two computers, the program was written entirely in assembly language, including floating point routines. A series of five articles about Annie in QST magazine won the 1984 ARRL technical excellence award. Selling Annie commercially provided an entrepreneurial education critical for later commercial success.

In 1986, James completed a Ph. D. at Syracuse University under Dr. Roger Harrington. His research on the electromagnetic analysis of planar circuits was prompted by his microwave design experience, especially on GaAs, where “tweaking” a design was no longer possible. Inspired by the early work of Rolf Jansen, he felt the solution might be found in numerical electromagnetics.

After completing his Ph. D., he worked for several years as a visiting professor at Syracuse and at Cornell, while continuing to develop the software started during his Ph. D. research. Then, in 1988, he took Sonnet full time. Sonnet’s first major sale was in 1989, the same year Sonnet incorporated and hired its first employee. The following decades were devoted to promoting the acceptance of numerical electromagnetics in the high frequency design cycle. As part of this effort, Sonnet was listed on the 1995 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing privately held US companies, the only high frequency software company ever so listed.

James’ other interests include ham radio; astronomy; geology; fern, tree, and bird song identification, ecology, philately, playing cello, Japanese culture and language, hiking, snow shoeing, and distance swimming. He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACES Fellow, and has been awarded the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Application, Service, and Career Awards. He was also a distinguished MTT-S lecturer from 2005 to 2007 and has lectured on Maxwell over 150 times world-wide. He was also primarily responsible for making the restoration of Maxwell’s home, Glenlair, possible.