Melvin M. Weiner (December 5, 1933 – February 12, 2016) was an electrical engineer, scientist, author, and inventor. He authored three books and 36 refereed papers. He was also the holder of five patents. He was the first to reduce pass-bands and stop-bands in photonic crystals to practice. Weiner was the founder-chairman of the Motor Vehicle Safety Group. Education Weiner received S.B. and S.M. degrees with honors in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jewish life Weiner, an orthodox Jew would often lecture regarding his insights into the 613 commandments. Focusing on their connections to the practices of the Ancient Egyptians, theorizing that many commandments were made in opposition to them. Motor Vehicle Safety Group Weiner was the founder-chairman of the Motor Vehicle Safety Group contributing to the establishment of the current National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Weiner also contributed to making the car bumper commonplace. Photonic crystals The pass-bands and stop-bands in photonic crystals were first reduced to practice by Melvin M. Weiner who called those crystals "discrete phase-ordered media." He achieved those results by extending Darwin's dynamical theory for x-ray Bragg diffraction to arbitrary wavelengths, angles of incidence, and cases where the incident wavefront at a lattice plane is scattered appreciably in the forward-scattered direction. Works Patents Solar Pumped Laser, US patent 3,297,958 Solar Thernionic Converter US Patent 3,467,840 Systems and Components for the Use of Electromagnetic Waves in Discrete, Phase Ordered Media US Patent 4,079,340 Unstable Optical Resonator with Off-Axis Non-Centered Obscuration US Patent 4,079,340 Electron Stream Deflection System, US patent 3,280,361 Books Monopole Elements on Circular Ground Planes Monopole Antennas Adaptive Antennas and Receivers Weiner also wrote chapter 4 in Progress in Electromagnetics Research (PIER 8) "Performance of Ground-Based High-Frequency Receiving Arrays with Electronically Small Ground Planes" Papers Weiner authored thirty-six refereed papers and one-hundred-thirty-five technical reports. Publications include: "Ferrite Reciprocal Phase Shift Properties (at 200–400 MHz)," Proceedings of the 1959 Electronic Components Conference, Philadelphia, p. 26, May 1959 (with K. Teragawa and W. Fitzgerald). "A New Method of Electronic Scanning Using a Combination Parallel Plate Transmission Line Feed," Proceedings, Electronic Scanning Symposium, Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Lexington, MA, April 29 – I May 1958 (talk given by G. Ploussios); see also "An Electronic Scanning Antenna System," AFCRC-TR-59-100 (Chu Associates, Littleton, MA), January 1959 (with G. Ploussios), NTIS AD 304191. "Light Gathering Properties of Optical Systems with Extended Sources," J. Opt. Soc. Amer. 54,