Willard Boyle

Willard Boyle (2009)

Willard Sterling Boyle , CC (born August 19, 1924 in Amherst , Nova Scotia , † May 7, 2011 in Halifax , Nova Scotia) was a Canadian physicist and co-inventor of charge-coupled devices (CCD). In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Charles Kuen Kao and George E. Smith .

life and work

Boyle served in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II , but never intervened in the war. He received his BSc in 1947, an MSc in 1948 and a Ph. D. 1950 from McGill University .

After completing his PhD, Boyle spent a year at Canada's Radiation Lab and taught for two years at the Royal Military College of Canada . In 1953 Boyle went to Bell Labs , where he and Don Nelson further developed the ruby laser for continuous operation in 1962 . His name was also mentioned in the first patent for the semiconductor injection laser . In 1962 he became director of the Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm, a subsidiary of Bell Labs, and worked on the Apollo program of NASA with for which it possible landing sites on the moon chose and proposed. In 1964 he returned to Bell Labs to work on integrated circuit development.

In 1969 Boyle and George E. Smith invented the CCD technology. For this groundbreaking discovery, both received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1973 , the Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers the following year, and the Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2006 . On October 6, 2009, he and George E. Smith were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for the invention of the CCD sensor ". In the same year he became a member of the Royal Society of Canada .

Boyle was Executive Director at Research for Bell Labs from 1975 until his retirement in 1979 . He then retired to Nova Scotia, where he worked on the Research Council of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research and the Science Council of the Province of Nova Scotia .

literature

• George Smith: Willard Boyle (1924-2011). In: Nature , Volume 474, 2011, p. 37, doi : 10.1038 / 474037a
• Toronto Star , Feb 16, 2006, A3: Article by Joan Baxter

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cumberland News Now: Nobel laureate dies Saturday ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Willard Boyle 1924-2011. Retrieved September 29, 2016 . 

Web links

Commons : Willard Boyle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Detailed entry on science.ca
• The press release of the Nobel Committee (English)
• Willard S. Boyle. Inventors Hall Of Fame(English).