A Nobel Nod To The Fathers Of Electronics Technology

Their work has spawned the calculator. The computer. The cell phone. Fiber optics. Bar-code readers. In fact, the modern electronics and information technology made possible by these eminent researchers is immeasurable. For that distinction, they will share the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics: Jack S. Kilby, who spent his career at Texas Instruments in Dallas; Herbert Kroemer, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Zhores I. Alferov, director of the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. Kilby, who will receive half of the more than $900,000 prize, is recognized as a pioneer in the development of the mother of all information technology, the integrated circuit. Integrated circuits are fixed arrangements of electronic components fabricated in or on silicon chips and have proved to be a boon to engineers, miniaturizing circuits that previously had consisted of unwieldy vacuum tubes. Kilby and his colleagues went on ...