Often referred to as “The Smartest Man in The World” in KGO Radio promotional material, Bill Wattenburg was truly a renaissance man. Bill was an engineer, actor, author, and inventor.
Born in 1936 and raised in rural Greenville, CA (Plumas County), Bill graduated from Chico State University summa cum laude in physics and electrical engineering, later achieving his doctoral degree at U.C. Berkeley. He then worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and later as a professor at Cal until 1970, continuing as a consultant at Lawrence Labs until his death in 2018.
From 1972 to 2011, Wattenburg was the host of The Open Line to the West Coast, a talk show broadcast on KGO Radio, focusing on science and the environmental movement. Despite the success of his consistently popular talk show, Wattenburg was fired by KGO, along with most of the station’s other talk hosts, on December 2, 2011. He then moved to KSCO in Santa Cruz, before joining the Talk Radio Network in early 2012.
Among his many inventions, Wattenburg patented the first home alarm system. He also authored two humorous books and had brief appearances in three films directed by his friend Clint Eastwood, The Dead Pool, Pink Cadillac, and True Crime.