Morris Tanenbaum
Silicon microchip inventor
Fellow, 94; died 26 February
Tanenbaum’s analysis within the mid-Nineteen Fifties proved that silicon was a greater semiconductor materials for transistors than germanium, which was generally used on the time. His discovery paved the way in which for extra environment friendly transistors essential in applied sciences that ushered within the Information Age.
He started his profession in 1952 at Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, N.J., as a researcher in its chemical physics division. Two years later, beneath the path of physicist and inventor William Shockley, who on the time labored at Bell Labs, Tanenbaum started investigating whether or not silicon crystals may very well be used for transistors.
In 1955 he and colleague Ernest Buehler demonstrated the primary silicon transistor.
Tanenbaum later developed the primary gas-diffused silicon transistor, which may amplify and swap alerts above 100 megahertz at a switching pace 10 occasions that of earlier silicon transistors.
Despite Tanenbaum’s early work on silicon transistors, AT&T didn’t help additional analysis or development of the expertise. At the time, Bell Labs was the analysis arm of AT&T. Although Bell Labs had “a significant technological lead in silicon transistor technology, it stopped doing proper research in the field—partly because it just wasn’t immediately relevant to AT&T’s business—so silicon transistor technology, including the integrated circuit, was done by Intel and Texas Instruments instead,” Tanenbaum stated in a 1999 oral historical past performed by the IEEE History Center.
Tanenbaum as a substitute labored on different new applied sciences within the a long time that adopted. In 1962 he was named assistant director of Bell Labs’ metallurgical division. He led the crew there that created the primary high-field superconducting magnets, which are actually utilized in MRI machines and different medical imaging applied sciences. Later he helped develop optical fiber and digital phone switching.
Tanenbaum went on to function president of AT&T’s New Jersey Bell (now a part of Verizon) within the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties.
He was appointed president of AT&T Communications in 1984. He retired 5 years later as AT&T’s vice chairman and chief monetary officer.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he additionally was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the MIT board of trustees.
He acquired a bachelor’s diploma in chemistry in 1949 from Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, and earned a Ph.D. in bodily chemistry from Princeton.
Adolf Goetzberger
Photovoltaics pioneer
Life Fellow, 94; died 24 February
Goetzberger was an early proponent of photo voltaic power applied sciences. Today photo voltaic is the third largest renewable-electricity sector behind hydropower and wind.
Together with physicist Armin Zastrow, he pioneered the idea of agrivoltaics—the usage of land for each agriculture and photo voltaic power technology.
After receiving a doctorate in physics in 1955 from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, in Munich Goetzberger joined Siemens, a multinational conglomerate, additionally in Munich. He then moved to the United States in 1958 to work as a senior scientist at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, in Palo Alto, Calif.
After 5 years at Shockley, he left to affix Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, N.J., the place he performed analysis on metal-oxide-semiconductor expertise. He returned to Germany in 1968 and have become director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF), in Freiburg. Three years later, whereas working on the IAF, he was named an honorary professor within the University of Freiburg physics division.
In 1981 Goetzberger based the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE)—now Europe’s largest photo voltaic analysis institute—additionally in Freiburg. That identical 12 months, he and Zastrow launched the agrivoltaic idea, through which photo voltaic panels are constructed atop greenhouses or in buildings above discipline crops to maximise land use. As of 2021, agrivoltaic methods have been able to producing greater than 14 gigawatts of electrical energy, in response to an ISE estimate.
In the early Nineteen Eighties, Goetzberger performed pioneering analysis into fluorescent planar collector-concentrators, using photovoltaic (PV) materials blended with fluorescent dyes to separate the assorted wavelengths of sunshine and convert them utilizing photo voltaic cells with totally different band gaps. The analysis paved the way in which for more practical solar energy technology. Under Goetzberger’s management, the ISE developed the primary extremely environment friendly, totally digital inverter for stand-alone PV methods.
Goetzberger was ISE director till he retired in 1993. He then served as president of the German Solar Energy Society (DGS), from 1993 to 1997. Based in Berlin, the DGS helps the introduction of photo voltaic applied sciences and renewable power sources into the facility grid.
He coauthored the seminal 2005 textbook Photovoltaic Solar Energy Generation.
Goetzberger, who held greater than 30 patents in Europe, was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Patent Office in 2009. In 1997 he acquired three prestigious awards: the Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit from the International Solar Energy Society, the Becquerel Prize from the European Commission, and the Cherry Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society. IEEE EDS additionally honored him in 1983 with its Ebers Award for his improvement of the silicon discipline impact transistor, which makes use of an electrical discipline to manage the circulation of present in a semiconductor. Goetzberger was the primary German to obtain the distinction.
Peter W. Sauer
2022 IEEE Nikola Tesla Award recipient
Life Fellow, 75; died 27 December
Sauer was a professor {of electrical} and pc engineering on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the place he taught programs and directed analysis on energy methods.
He acquired the 2022 IEEE Nikola Tesla Award “for contributions to dynamic modeling and simulation of synchronous generators and for leadership in power engineering education.”
Sauer served within the U.S. Air Force as {an electrical} engineer, designing and establishing airfield lighting and electrical distribution methods at Langley Air Force Base, in Virginia. He left energetic responsibility in 1973 however continued to serve within the Air Force Reserve for practically three a long time, retiring in 1998 as a lieutenant colonel.
He joined the University of Illinois in 1977 as a professor. His analysis there was targeted on learn how to enhance the soundness of electrical energy methods utilizing large-scale simulations.
In 1991 and 1992 he served as program director of energy methods within the National Science Foundation’s electrical and communication methods division.
In 1996 he cofounded PowerWorld, an influence system data and evaluation firm, in Champaign, Ill. Transmission planners and methods operators use the corporate’s PowerWorld Simulator, a set of interactive software program instruments, to mannequin energy grid operations beneath totally different circumstances. He retired in 2019.
Sauer, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, wrote Power System Dynamics and Stability, and he authored or coauthored greater than 200 technical papers.
He acquired an IEEE Power & Energy SocietyLifetime Achievement Award in 2020 “for exceptional career-long contributions to power systems modeling and dynamic analysis, and for leadership in power engineering education.”
After receiving a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering in 1969 from the University of Missouri at Rolla (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology), he went on to earn grasp’s and doctoral levels in EE from Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind., in 1974 and 1977, respectively.
Robert W. “Bob” Lawson
Telecommunications engineer
Senior member, 89; died 18 November
Lawson labored for Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania (now a part of AT&T) in Pittsburgh for 35 years. He climbed the ranks and retired in 1988 as a member of the manager crew.
During the Korean War, he served within the U.S. Navy as a cryptologic technician specializing in airborne, shipborne, and land-based radar alerts.
He started his civilian profession in 1953 as a phone set up professional at Bell. At the time, he additionally attended night time college on the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, the place he earned an affiliate diploma in engineering in 1963.
After retiring from Bell in 1988, he started working with the U.S. authorities as a telecommunications contractor. He additionally labored for a number of years as an engineer at IT providers firm Unisys in Blue Bell, Pa. He then turned a guide; his major shopper was the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (now PLDT), in Makati. He retired from consulting in 1998.
Lawson loved taking part in pool, flying stunt kites, singing, taking part in golf, and serving to his neighbors remedy expertise issues.