Julius Edgar Lilienfeld

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Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (passport photo of his US ID, i.e. from 1934 onwards)

Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (born April 18, 1882 in Lemberg , † August 28, 1963 in Charlotte Amalie , Virgin Islands ) was a physicist of Austro-Hungarian origin. In 1925 he discovered the principle of the field effect transistor .

life and work

Lilienfeld's father was the lawyer Sigmund Lilienfeld, his mother Sarah Jampoler Lilienfeld. Julius Edgar Lilienfeld graduated from secondary school in Lemberg and enrolled in 1899 as a student at the Technical University in Charlottenburg to study mechanical engineering . After a year he moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin for the period 1900–1904 , where he was enrolled in the philosophical faculty, but mainly studied experimental physics (among others with Ferdinand Georg Frobenius , Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff , Johannes Knoblauch , Max Planck and Emil Warburg ).

In 1902 he published an essay "An attempt at a strict version of the concept of mathematical probability" in the "Journal for Philosophy and Philosophical Critique". He received his doctorate on February 18, 1905 on the basis of the dissertation: "About a general and extremely sensitive method for the spectral qualitative elementary investigation of gas mixtures". From 1905 he worked at the Institute for Physics at the University of Leipzig , where he worked a. a. with the production of liquefied gases . In 1910 he completed his habilitation on the subject of "The electricity line in an extreme vacuum". At that time he was intensely involved in the generation of X-rays and owned patents on a type of X-ray tube which used a hot cathode and which became known as the Coolidge tube .

In 1919 he described for the first time a gray-white radiation from X-ray tubes that was visible to the human eye , the " lily field radiation " named after him . It could only be explained later as a form of transition radiation , which was described in 1946 by Witali Lasarewitsch Ginsburg and Ilja Michailowitsch Frank .

In 1925 he developed the field effect transistor . Although the pure semiconductor material necessary to build a functional transistor was missing at that time, he already described the construction and function of transistors in detail. RG Arns cites the work of Bret Crawford (1991), who claims to have found indications that Lilienfeld could also have built the elements he patented. It has also been proven that the US developers of the transistor were aware of the corresponding Lilienfeld patents. Documents prove that William B. Shockley and Pearson built working transistors based on the patents of Lilienfeld and Oskar Heil . They failed to mention these fundamental Lilienfeld patents in their publications, subsequent research reports, or historical reports.

In 1927 Lilienfeld finally emigrated to the USA because of increasing anti-Semitism , which he already knew from previous work stays. On May 2, 1926, he married Beatrice Ginsburg. They lived in Winchester, Massachusetts . Lilienfeld was the head of Ergon Research Laboratories in Malden (Mass.). In 1934 he became a US citizen. Before that he had Austrian-Hungarian citizenship (at least until 1910), later Polish citizenship (his place of birth Lviv had belonged to Poland since the end of 1918). From 1935 he lived with his wife in a house on the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas , around one To avoid allergy associated with wheat fields. Numerous trips have taken him to the mainland to test new ideas. He applied for a total of 15 German and 60 US patents and fought to enforce his patent rights until his death.

The Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize has been awarded since 1989 and was founded in 1988 by the widow, Beatrice Lilienfeld.

Patents (selection)

Lilienfeld owned 15 German and 60 US patents.

  • Patent CA272437 : Electric Current Control Mechanism. Filed October 22, 1925 , published July 19, 1927 , inventor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (registered with the Canadian Patent Office ). ‌
  • Patent US1745175 : Method and Apparatus For Controlling Electric Currents. Published January 28, 1930 , inventor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. ‌
  • Patent US1900018 : Device for controlling electric current. Registered on March 28, 1928 , inventor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (thin film MOSFET ). ‌
  • Patent US1877140 : Amplifier for electric currents. Registered on December 8, 1928 , inventor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (semiconductor version of the vacuum tube ). ‌
  • Patent US2013564 : Electrolytic condenser. Registered on August 29, 1931 , inventor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld ( electrolytic capacitor ). ‌

Web links

Commons : Julius Edgar Lilienfeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Julius Edgar Lilienfeld and William David Coolidge - their X-ray tubes and their conflicts (MPI for the History of Science; PDF; 4.7 MB)
  2. ↑ JE Lilienfeld: The visible radiation of the Brennecks from X-ray tubes . In: Physikalische Zeitschrift . tape 20 , no. 12 , 1919, pp. 280 ff .
  3. ^ VL Ginzburg, IM Frank: Uniformly moving electron radiation due to its transition from one medium to another . In: Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz . tape 16 , 1946, pp. 15 .
  4. ↑ Jochen Schnapka: Dual track detection using cathode readout on the ZEUS transition radiation detector . 1998 ( GZip archive - diploma thesis, University of Bonn). GZip archive ( Memento from June 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ H. Boersch, C. Radeloff, G. Sauerbrey: About the visible and ultraviolet radiation released on metals by electrons . In: Journal of Physics A Hadrons and Nuclei . tape 165 , no. 4 , 1961, pp. 464-484 , doi : 10.1007 / BF01381902 .
  6. ↑ Hans Boersch, C. Radeloff, G. Sauerbrey: Experimental Detection of Transition Radiation . In: Physical Review Letters . tape 7 , no. 2 , 1961, p. 52-54 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.7.52 (English).
  7. ^ A b R. G. Arns: The other transistor: early history of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor . In: Engineering Science and Education Journal . Vol. 7, No. 5 , 1998, pp. 233-240 ( abstract ).
  8. ^ BE Crawford: The Invention of the Transistor . 1991 ( gettysburg.edu [PDF] Master's thesis, The University of Vermont).
  9. ↑ as can be seen in a résumé from 1910: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld and William David Coolidge - their X-ray tubes and their conflicts , page 44
  10. ↑ as can be seen from a Canadian patent application from 1925: In the Canadian patent application filed on October 22, 1925, Lilienfeld describes himself in the first person, in the first sentence, as a Polish citizen . Retrieved March 12, 2019.
  11. ↑ Biography of Julius Edgar Lilienfeld ( Memento from January 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), website incredible-people.com
  12. ^ Website of the Lilienfeld Prize
  13. ↑ Biography ( Memento from February 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Lilienfeld, Julius Edgar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Hungarian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Lviv
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1963
Place of death Charlotte Amalie , Virgin Islands, USA