Former Electrical Engineering Distinguished Professor Awarded Nobel Prize In Physics Kilby (left) is presented with his endowed chair from TI and his honorary doctorate (right) from the Department of Electrical Engineering. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences presented Jack St. Clair Kilby, distinguished professor for the department from 1978 to 1985, the Award in October for his part in the development of the integrated circuit at Texas Instruments, a design said to have revolutionized the electronics industry. Kilby, who also was co-inventor of the pocket calculator, shares the $915,000 Award with Zhores I. Alferov of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Herbert Kroemer, a German-born researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara. They were honored for their work in developing technology used in satellite communications and cellular phones. . The microchip, now the electronic heart of products ranging from supercomputers, space probes and medical diagnostic equipment to cellular phones, was designed by Kilby soon after he joined Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. It was fabricated from a single piece of semiconductor material about half the size of a paper clip. Kilby, 76, said in an Associated Press article that he was surprised by the Award because he worked in engineering and not physics, a trend fellow colleagues hope will continue. | |
|