Keith G. Balmain received the B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Toronto in 1957, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1959 and 1963 in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, where he was associated with the Antenna Laboratory.
He was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois, associated primarily with the Aeronomy Laboratory, until 1966. He then joined what is now The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he is a Professor Emeritus. He chaired the Division of Engineering Science for two and a half years until 1987, after which he chaired the University of Toronto's Research Board for a three-year term. For the period 1991-2001 he was the Senior Chairholder of the NSERC/Bell Canada/Nortel Industrial Research Chair in Electromagnetics.
Dr. Balmain was corecipient of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) 1970 Best Paper of the Year award, in 1987 he was elected Fellow of the IEEE (Life Fellow in 1997) "for contributions to the understanding of log-periodic antennas and antennas in plasma", and in 1992 he was corecipient of a NASA Group Achievement Award for a study of plasma effects due to electrical grounding on the Space Station. He coauthored with E.C. Jordan the second edition of Electromagnetic Waves and Radiating Systems.
Member of the IEEE Antenna Standards Committee and chair of the Subcommittee on Antennas in Physical Media (1968-1976), chair of URSI (International Union of Radio Science) Canadian Commission VI (1970-1973), member of the IEEE AP-S AdCom (1973-1976), associate editor of Radio Science (1978-1980), chair of the Technical Program Committee for the 1980 IEEE AP-S International Symposium in Quebec City, and chair of the
local Organizing Committee for the
1999 URSI General Assembly in Toronto. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.