Honoring Your Profession: Introduction

Oct. 20, 2003
In this issue, Electronic Design once again pays tribute to the EE profession by presenting the Class of 2003 inductees for the Engineering Hall Of Fame. These are the individuals you deemed most worthy to be honored with your online ballots....

In this issue, Electronic Design once again pays tribute to the EE profession by presenting the Class of 2003 inductees for the Engineering Hall Of Fame. These are the individuals you deemed most worthy to be honored with your online ballots. Following the 2003 Honor Roll, we shine the spotlight on six Hall Of Famers from both this year and last. Finally, we offer a fascinating and intriguing glimpse at the lifestyles of many of these living legends and how they continue to contribute to society and their profession.

Engineering Hall of Fame 2002 InducteesEdwin Armstrong: radio's premier inventor, he created the electronic circuits that form the foundation of all modern radio, radar, and television technologies

John Backus: developed FORTRAN (mathematical FORmula TRANslating system), the programming language for the 704 computer, while at IBM

John M. Birkner and Hua-Thye Chua: co-developed programmable-array logic technology, the precursor to today's field-programmable logic technology

Paul Brokaw: invented the Brokaw cell, a bandgap voltage reference technique that resulted in monolithic voltage references

Hans Camenzind: designer of the 555 timer, the highest-volume IC

Vinton Cerf: co-developer of the TCP/IP protocol, the communications protocol that gave birth to the Internet

James H. Clark and Marc Andreessen: co-founders of Netscape Communications Corp., which pioneered the browser that opened up the Internet to the world

Seymour Cray: a computer design innovator and founder of Control Data Corp.

Bob Dobkin: co-founded Linear Technology Corp., developed the first three-terminal linear regulator and the fist bipolar LDO, and boosted the speed of early op amps

William Dubilier: founder of the Dubilier Co. and developer of the mica capacitor; holds over 355 patents in radio and electrical sciences; in 1933, the Dubilier Co. joined with Cornell Electric Manufacturing to form Cornell Dubilier Electric

J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly: invented the first true general-purpose computer

Thomas Edison: invented the incandescent electric lamp, the phonograph, the motion-picture projector, the alkaline storage battery, and over 1000 other inventions

John M. Fluke Sr.: launched John Fluke Engineering Co. in his basement, which introduced a unique power meter and the differential voltmeter

Dave Fullagar: developed the first compensated operational amplifier, the 741, easing the use of op amps in analog design

Barrie Gilbert: developed the translinear principle, which is utilized within numerous analog ICs, and the Gilbert-cell mixer, which is now ubiquitous in wireless systems

Bernard M. Gordon: developed the core technology for high-speed analog-to-digital conversion and pioneered instant-imaging CT scanning systems

Andrew S. Grove: co-founder of Intel Corp., now the world's largest semiconductor company

William R. Hewlett and David Packard: co-founders of Hewlett-Packard Corp.

Marcian (Ted) Hoff: developed the 4004, the first commercial microprocessor

Grace Hopper: developed Cobol (Common Business Oriented Language)

Charles House: recognized as the father of the logic analyzer

Walt Jung: audio guru and well-known prolific author, especially for definitive texts about op amps

Charles Kao: invented optical fibers and fiber-optic communications

Jack Kilby: invented the integrated circuit (an oscillator on a germanium substrate) while at Texas Instruments

Gary Kildall: developed a programming language called PL/M, which he later used to form Digital Research Inc., and a control program, CP/M, for the Intel 8080

Hedy Lamarr: famous Hollywood movie star who patented spread-spectrum technology, which makes radio signals invulnerable to interference or jamming; this technology has only recently come to fruition with the advent of digital communications

Bob Mammano: developed the first PWM controller in 1974

Guglielmo Marconi: invented wireless telegraphy and radio communications

Carver Mead and Lynn Conway: co-authored Introduction to VLSI Systems, foreshadowing today's still-evolving SoC design methodologies

Robert M. Metcalfe: invented Ethernet and developed Metcalfe's law, which says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users

Gordon Moore: co-founder of Intel Corp.; developed Moore's Law, which says IC complexity will double every 18 months

Robert N. Noyce: invented the integrated circuit (on a silicon substrate) while at Fairchild Semiconductor; also invented the first field-effect transistor; co-founder of Intel Corp.

Robert A. Pease: built the first adjustable negative regulator at National Semiconductor

Donald O. Pederson: the father of SPICE

George Philbrick: developed the first commercial operational amplifier and the first analog computer for simulation and converted the op amp to solid-state design using transistors

Dennis Ritchie: created the C language

Claude E. Shannon: discovered the analogy between George Boole's logical algebra and digital switching circuits, enabling the design and analysis of digital circuits

William B. Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter H. Brittain: developed the first transistor

Al Shugart: pioneer of floppy-disk technology; founded Shugart Associates and then Seagate Technology

Philip Smith: creator of the Smith Chart, which graphically matches transmission lines to antennas to show what must be achieved to obtain a better match

Nikola Tesla: invented the ac induction motor, the telephone repeater, the Tesla coil transformer, and fluorescent lights

Linus Torvalds: developed Linux as an alternative to MS-DOS and Unix so he could access newsgroups on the then-emerging Internet

James Truchard and Jeff Kodosky: co-invented LabVIEW and co-founded National Instruments

Alan M. Turing: founder of computer science, codebreaker, and inventor of the Turing Machine

Patrizio Vinciarelli: founded Vicor and invented zero-current switching and zero-voltage switching technologies, which let power converters be designed much smaller and more efficiently

C. Howard Vollum: co-founded Tektronix with Jack Murdock; developed the 511 oscilloscope (also known as the "Vollumscope"), which set a new industry standard for speed

John von Neumann: invented the stored program
concept

Robert Widlar: designed the first monolithic op amp

Jim Williams: designed hundreds of fundamental applications circuits and perfected the art of getting the maximum performance from high-performance amplifiers and data converters

Steve Wozniak and Steven P. Jobs: co-founded Apple and co-invented the PC, the Apple I

Barrie Gilbert When Electronic Design launched its Engineering Hall Of Fame last year, one inductee—Barrie Gilbert—was inadvertently omitted from the inaugural honor roll. We apologize and are correcting this oversight here. He is also one of our featured honorees (see this issue, p. 110). Barrie Gilbert (Life Fellow, IEEE) pursued an early interest in semiconductors and alloy junction transistors at Mullard Ltd. in the U.K. In 1964, at Tektronix, he developed advances in oscilloscopes and the company's first integrated circuits. In 1970-72, he was Group Leader at Plessey Research Labs (the U.K.), working on holographic memories. He consulted to Analog Devices Inc. (1972-77) and later joined that company as its first ADI Fellow in 1979. He manages the Northwest Labs, ADI's first remote design center, in Beaverton, Ore., developing a variety of IC products for the communications industry. Holder of 65 patents, he has authored papers in JSSC and other journals, is a contributor to several texts, and is a co-editor of a recent book. For work on merged logic, he received the IEEE Outstanding Achievement Award (1970), and for contributions to nonlinear signal processing, the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council Outstanding Development Award (1986). He was Oregon Researcher of the Year in 1990 and received the Solid-State Circuits Award in 1992, the ISSCC Outstanding Paper Award on five occasions, the Best Paper Award at ESSCIRC twice, and various awards for Best Product of the Year. In 1997, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Oregon State University. For recreation, he composes and plays music, writes poetry, and communes with his feline companions.

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