10 living and 5 deceased inventors have been named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which this year celebrates the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit by honoring inventors whose work contributed to the IC’s advance.
“Virtually every electronic device in use today relies on advances in integrated circuit technology,” says Fred Allen, Vice President of Selection for the National Inventors Hall of Fame, in a statement. “By honoring the accomplishments of this year’s inductees, we are acknowledging their contributions that have done no less than make our modern way of life possible.”
The 2009 class of inductees, all of whom have been granted U.S. patents, will be recognized at a May 2 ceremony in Mountain View, Calif. The inductees:
(Living)
- Martin M. (John) Atalla: MOS transistor (a Bell Labs inventor who went on to devise the PIN method of security used in automated banking machines. (Wonder what he’d think of this headline: “Largest coordinated ATM rip-off ever nets $9 million-plus in 30 minutes”)
Alfred Y. Cho: Molecular beam epitaxy-MBE (cell phones and DVD/CD players use them)
- Dov Frohman-Bentchkowsky: EPROM
- George Heilmeier: Liquid crystal display
- Larry Hornbeck: Digital micromirror device-DMD
- John Macdougall, Ken Manchester: Ion implantation
- Carver Mead: VLSI method for designing chips
- Gordon Moore: Semiconductor production
- Frank Wanlass: Complementary metal oxide semiconductor-CMOS
(Posthumous recognition)
- Ross Freeman: Field programmable gate array-FPGA (LANs and cell phone nets use them)
- Jean Hoerni: Planar process
- Dawon Kahng: MOS transistor
- Gordon Teal: Silicon transistor
- Robert Widlar: Linear integrated circuits
