Jack Kilby

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Jack Kilby bigraphy, stories - American physicist

Jack Kilby : biography

November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005

Jack St. Clair Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) was an American electrical engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000.http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/index.html

He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer.

Awards and honors

Recognition of Kilby’s outstanding achievements have been made by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), including the election to IEEE Fellow in 1966, the IEEE David Sarnoff Award in 1966, co-recipient of the first IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award in 1978,{} the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1986.{} He was co-recipient of the Franklin Institute’s Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1966.{} In 1982 and 1989, he received the Holley Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).{} He was elected to member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1967,{} received the Academy’s Vladimir K. Zworykin Award in 1975, and was co-recipient of the first NAE’s Charles Stark Draper Prize in 1989.{} was founded in 1980 in his honor.

He is also the recipient of the nation’s most prestigious honors in science and engineering: the National Medal of Science in 1969 and the National Medal of Technology in 1990. In 1982, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In 1993 he was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize by the Inamori Foundation. He was awarded both the Washington Award, administered by the Western Society of Engineers and the Eta Kappa Nu Vladimir Karapetoff Award in 1999. In 2000, Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his breakthrough discovery, and delivered his personal view of the industry and its history in his .

Kilby was awarded nine honorary doctorate degrees from Universities including Southern Methodist University, the University of Miami, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Texas A&M University, Yale and Rochester Institute of Technology. The National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Taiwan awarded Kilby with a certificate of Honorary Professorship in 1998.

The Kilby Center, TI’s research center for silicon manufacturing, is named after him.

The Jack Kilby Computer Centre at the Merchiston Campus of Edinburgh Napier University in Edinburgh is also named in his honor.

Kilby patents

  • Plug-in Circuit Units, filed December 1953, issued June 1959, assigned to Globe-Union, Inc.
  • Semiconductor Structure Fabrication, filed May 1959, issued January 1963
  • Miniature Semiconductor Integrated Circuit, filed May 1959, issued December 1963
  • Miniature Semiconductor Network Diode and Gate, filed May 1959, issued June 1964
  • Miniaturized Electronic Circuits, filed February 6, 1959, issued June, 1964
  • Miniaturized Self-contained Circuit Modules, filed May 1959, issued June 1964
  • Semiconductor Structure Fabrication, filed May 1959, issued April 1969
  • Thermal Printer, filed October 1965, issued February 1970
  • Miniature Electronic Calculator, originally filed September 1967, issued June 1974