Calvin Souther Fuller

Calvin Souther Fuller (born May 25, 1902 in Chicago , Illinois , † October 28, 1994 in Vero Beach , Florida ) was an American chemist , known as a pioneer in semiconductor research and one of the inventors of the solar cell .

Fuller studied chemistry at the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in 1926 and was there in 1929 with William Draper Harkins with the thesis I. An apparatus for measuring strong magnetic fields. II. The magnetic susceptibility of nitric oxide. III. The glazier effect in physical chemistry doctorate . He also worked as an analytical chemist and for the Chicago Tribune as a photograver. From 1930 until his retirement in 1967 he was at Bell Laboratories . During the Second World War he coordinated the development of synthetic rubber on behalf of the government. From 1945 to 1950 he was a research advisor to the Department of Defense .

At the beginning of the 1950s he was a pioneer at Bell Laboratories in the production of pn junctions with diffusion (parallel to William Crawford Dunlap at General Electric ).

In 1954, together with Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson, he developed the silicon solar cell, then called the solar battery. The launch of the solar cell by Bell Laboratories in 1954 was a major media event. It was soon used by the military and in 1958 in the Vanguard I satellite . At Bell Laboratories he also researched polymers, for example materials for coaxial cables that also insulate at high frequencies, for which he used polyethylene . He held 33 patents.

In 2008, Fuller was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame with Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson for inventing the silicon solar cell. In 1963 he received the John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute , in 1956 the John Scott Medal of the City of Philadelphia, in 1985 the Photovoltaic Founders Award of the IEEE and in 1981 the Krupp Prize. In 1964 he became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

He had been married to Willimine Works since 1932 and had three children. When he retired, he moved to Vero Beach.

Fonts

• DM Chapin, CS Fuller, GL Pearson: A New Silicon pn Junction Photocell for Converting Solar Radiation into Electrical Power . In: Journal of Applied Physics . tape 25 . American Institute of Physics , May 1954, ISSN  0021-8979 , p. 676–677 ( A New Silicon p ‐ n Junction Photocell for Converting Solar Radiation into Electrical Power [PDF]).

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times
• Oral History Interview with James Bohning 1986, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ^ Vast Power of the Sun Is Tapped By Battery Using Sand Ingredient . In: The New York Times . The New York Times Company, April 26, 1954, ISSN 0362-4331 , pp.   1 ( Vast Power of the Sun Is Tapped By Battery Using Sand Ingredient [PDF]).
2. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Calvin Souther Fuller at academictree.org, accessed on February 6, 2018th
3. ^ Mark Burgess Diffusion Technologies at Bell Labs , 2010