Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
So what else have you got
alex
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LOL!
My previous boss, Ray. Now he was smart. He passed away in January 2020.
Born in West Australia, he was the son of a letter sorter at the General Post Office.
He received a Government High School Scholarship to enter Perth
Modern School in 1948.
As a physicist he lectured in Copehagen before working at Bell Labs
in New Jersey.
He was the first to experimentally observe the quantum well effect
and co-invented the
quantum well laser, which are used to power the
optical fibres of the Internet.
He played a seminal role in the invention of an ultra-fast type of transistor
known as the High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT).
Fabricated in Gallium Arsenide, we all have one in our smartphones.
In fact HEMTs makes it possible for cell phones to communicate wirelessly.
HEMTs only work because of quantum mechanics. In fact they utilize that
quantum well phenomena that Ray was the first to experimentally
demonstrate.
They are used in the receivers of satellite dishes including the giant
satellite dishes that form the Deep Space Network for communicating
with space probes.
The quintessential Aussie you never heard of who became an ex-pat but
went onto a daunting career of achievements, he was a Bell Labs Fellow.
He said there were fewer Bell Labs Fellows working at Bell Labs at the
time than Nobel Laureates. As the manager of the III-V semiconductor
laboratory at Bell Labs, he put forth the idea that led his team to win the
1998 Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was very modest but told us the thing he was proudest of was that he
had hand fabricated a pair of special ultra high-speed transistors that were
onboard the Voyagers.
"Long after I am gone", he would tell us, "They will still be out there".