Walter Eric Spear

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Walter Eric Spear (born January 20, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main ; † February 21, 2008 in Dundee ) was a British solid-state physicist who was a pioneer in amorphous semiconductors .

Life

Spear went to school in Frankfurt (Abitur 1938). Since his father (a photographer) was Jewish, he and his family fled to London from persecution by the National Socialists. He was interned briefly in World War II and then served in the Royal Pioneer Corps and the Royal Artillery from 1940 to 1946. He then obtained a degree in physics from Regent Street Polytechnic (later the University of Westminster ) in London and studied at Birkbeck College, University of London with John Desmond Bernal and Werner Ehrenberg in the crystallographic laboratory, where he received his doctorate in 1950. There he developed X-ray machines for crystallography and their electron optics. Bernal also passed the apparatus on to Maurice Wilkins in 1950 , where they played a role in the crystallographic investigations of DNA .

Spear then stayed at Birkbeck College and in 1953 went to the University College Leicester as a lecturer , where he dealt with films made of amorphous selenium , the conductivity of which he examined. His research also led to collaboration with industry (Xerox, EMI). In the 1960s, for example, he dealt with transport by polarons and electronic transport in simple noble gas crystals. During this time he began his long-term collaboration with Peter LeComber , who did his doctorate with him. In 1968 he became a professor at the University of Dundee . There he dealt in particular with amorphous solids such as amorphous silicon (in the form of thin films), where he worked with the theorist Nevill Mott . In particular, he and his group showed that with the method they used to produce films of amorphous silicon (and germanium) from gas discharges, doping could be well controlled via the gas phase. In the mid-1970s they produced a pn junction from amorphous silicon and pursued its applications in photovoltaics . In the 1980s, his group demonstrated field effect transistors with amorphous silicon and in collaboration with scientists from the University of Edinburgh (Alan Owen et al.) Storage elements made of amorphous silicon. In 1990 he retired.

He was an amateur musician (cello) and had been married to Hilda King since 1952, with whom he had two daughters.

Honors and memberships

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ His mother was a Protestant pastor's daughter and a violinist known in Frankfurt
personal data
SURNAME Spear, Walter Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 2008
Place of death Dundee