BOSTON (AP) – Leopold B. Felsen, a Boston University professor who fled the Holocaust as a teenager and became a top expert on the properties of waves, died in Boston on Sept. 24. He was 81.

His son, Michael, said the cause of death was complications from surgery.

Felsen, who was described in a brief death notice on Boston University’s Web site as a “distinguished and cherished colleague,” wrote more than 300 articles and several books.

The book “Radiation and Scattering of Waves,” written with Nathan Marcuvitz, is considered one of the most important works on electromagnetics.

Much of Felsen’s career was at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, now Polytechnic University, where he was dean of engineering from 1974 to 1978 and a teaching professor until his 1994 retirement.

He had attended the Brooklyn school after Army service in World War II.

After he retired, Felsen moved to Boston to be closer to his family. Boston University persuaded him to join its faculty, and he taught there until his death.

Felsen, who lived with muscular dystrophy for 30 years, traveled extensively to lecture on wave physics.

One of Felsen’s hobbies was writing poetry about science and other topics; many were published in a “Poet’s Corner” he established in an electronics engineers journal.

Born in Munich, Felsen was sent to live with relatives in the United States when he was 16 to escape Nazi persecution of Jews. His parents survived and came to the United States in 1946, but many relatives, including an older sister, died during the war.

In addition to his son, who lives in Boston, Felsen is survived by a daughter, Judith, of Bartlett, N.H., and three grandchildren. His wife of 30 years, the former Sima Laks, died in 1975.