John Woollam

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John Arthur Woollam (born August 10, 1939 in Kalamazoo , Michigan ) is an American physicist and electrical engineer .

Studies and career start

JA Woollam was the son of Arthur Woollam, a water pump entrepreneur based in Kalamazoo , Michigan. He studied Liberal Arts (humanities) at Kenyon College ( Gambier , Ohio ), where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961 . This was followed by a master's degree in physics (degree: Master of Science , 1963) at Michigan State University , where he was a doctoral student in solid-state physics until 1967 (dissertation, 1967).

After completing his doctorate, Woollam worked for 13 years at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the field of cryophysics and superconductivity, where, among other projects, he was involved in the development of advanced power supply and propulsion systems. At the same time, he earned another Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University ( Cleveland , Ohio).

When NASA began to reduce its research in the area of ​​superconductivity, Woollam looked for employment in other areas. For this reason, he did not accept an offered position at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and instead went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in 1979 . There he became George Holmes Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Woollam took over the direction of the ellipsometry program; Even then, the UNL was one of the leading institutions in the field of ellipsometry. As part of this program, he investigated new semiconductor materials for high-frequency applications , for example gallium arsenide or aluminum gallium arsenide .

In 1985 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

Establishment of JA Woollam Co., Inc.

The long measuring times - the measurement for a single wavelength took around 20 minutes - frustrated Woollam and prompted him to automate the measuring process. As early as 1987, Woollam founded a spin-off company, JA Woollam Co., Inc. He recruited two young graduates to develop a first commercial prototype of the instrument. The new measuring instrument was so much faster at collecting measurement data that Samuel Alterovitz , a former colleague at NASA wanted a similar system. The company won a tender and in 1988 completed development of an improved version of the instrument. After completing a second ellipsometer for the Army Research Laboratory-Watertown (MA) in June 1989, the data collection and processing speed of the devices made Woollam feel confident enough to exhibit at trade shows. The first kills helped start a new company, which Woollam had to support from its own resources in the first few years. In the following years the company developed into one of the world's leading suppliers of spectroscopic ellipsometers.

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Woollam: Electron transport properties of metallic tin in high magnetic fields and at liquid helium temperatures . 1967 (Ph. D. Thesis; Michigan State University. Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, 1967.).
personal data
SURNAME Woollam, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woollam, John Arthur (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and electrical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Kalamazoo , Michigan, USA