GEORGE E. SMITH
American Scientist George E. Smith was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for opening the door to digital cameras. His colleague Willard S. Boyle also shares one-quarter of 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. They together invented “Charge-Coupled Device(CCD)” sensor, which captured digital images. This censor is now used in digital cameras, which enable film free photography.
BIOGRAPHY
George E. Smith was born on 10th May 1930 in White Plains, New York. He gained his graduation in science from the ‘University of Pennsylvania’ and gained his PhD from the ‘University of Chicago’. Then he worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey, and there he had done research in novel lasers and semiconductor devices. In 1969, Smith and his colleague Boyle was invented ‘CCD censor’ which turns light into electrical signals. This invention led to the film-free photography, because the light could be now captured electronically instead of on film with this censor. This censor is the “electronic eye” of the digital camera which captured digital images. Today, CCDs are used in digital cameras, astronomy, and medicine, as well as other fields. With their invention, we saw the red deserts in mars from the images taken by the digital camera in space. In 1986, he retired from Bell Laboratories as head of the VLSI Device Department. Smith holds many positions including the member of Pi Mu Epsilon, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He holds 31 U.S. Patents and is the author of more than 40 papers. He is married to Janet Murphy.
AWARDS AND HONORS
Smith gained many awards with Boyle for their invention of CCD sensor. They jointly received the ‘Franklin Institute’s Stuart Ballantine Medal’ in 1973, ‘IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award in 1974, ‘Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2006, ‘Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of America in 1986, ‘IEEE Device Research Conference Breakthrough Award in 1999, ‘Edwin H. Land Medal’ by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology in 2001, ‘C&C Prize of the NEC Foundation’, Tokyo in 1999 and ‘Nobel Prize in Physics’ in 2009.
