William E. Spicer

William Edward Spicer (born September 7, 1929 in Baton Rouge , † June 6, 2004 in London ) was an American physicist and professor at Stanford University . He is particularly known for photoelectron spectroscopy of solids and their surfaces and generally for the study of photoemission .

Spicer studied physics at William and Mary College with a bachelor's degree in 1949, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (with another bachelor's degree in 1951) and at the University of Missouri , where he received his master's degree in 1953 and received his doctorate in 1955. From 1955 to 1962 he was at the RCA research laboratories, where his investigation of the physical basis of photocathodes was of importance for television cameras and the development of residual light amplifiers (night vision devices). In 1962 he became a professor at Stanford University in the electrical engineering department, where he established a solid-state physics program. He also worked in the Faculty of Materials Science and Applied Physics. In 1978 he became Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering. In 1992 he retired, but remained scientifically active. He died of a heart attack while on vacation in London.

He co-founded the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) at SLAC (with Sebastian Doniach , Herman Winick , Ingolf Lindau ) after convincing SLAC director Wolfgang Panofsky , and he applied synchrotron radiation to research into the electronic structure of solids. His research and inventions also resulted in improved night vision devices and medical applications. As a consultant to Varian, he developed an improved image intensifier for X-rays that was widely used and made it possible for the first time to make objects such as kidney stones visible in X-ray images. It also enabled real-time recordings of, for example, blood vessels during bypass operations. He was also known at Stanford as a patient and dedicated mentor to students after suffering from speech and reading disorders himself in his youth.

In 1980 he and Dean E. Eastman received the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize for the effective development and application of photoelectron spectroscopy as an indispensable tool for the study of the electronic structure of solids in volume and on surfaces (laudation). More than 700 scientific publications come from him. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE . In 1984 he received the Medard W. Welch Award from the American Vacuum Society .

Web links

Obituary by Dawn Levy, Stanford Report July 7, 2004

Individual evidence

↑ © Stanford University Stanford, California 94305 Copyright Complaints Trademark Notice: Memorial Resolution: William Edward Spicer. July 12, 2006, accessed December 18, 2018 .

personal data
SURNAME	Spicer, William E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Spicer, William Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American physicist and professor at Stanford University
DATE OF BIRTH	September 7, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH	Baton Rouge
DATE OF DEATH	June 6, 2004
Place of death	London

[1] © Stanford University Stanford, California 94305 Copyright Complaints Trademark Notice: Memorial Resolution: William Edward Spicer. July 12, 2006, accessed December 18, 2018 .