乔治·史密斯1930—2025

生平

史密斯出生于美国纽约州白原市。1955年获得宾夕法尼亚大学的理学学士学位，1959年获得芝加哥大学物理博士学位，此后进入贝尔实验室工作，一直至1986年退休。1969年，他与加拿大出生的物理学家威拉德·博伊尔共同发明电荷耦合元件（CCD）。2009年，史密斯与博伊尔和高锟三人共同获得诺贝尔物理学奖。

2025年5月28日，史密斯于新泽西州巴尼加特镇区的自宅内过世，享年95岁。

George Elwood Smith (May 10, 1930 – May 28, 2025) was an American applied physicist and a co-inventor of the charge-coupled device (CCD). Smith shared one half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics with Willard Boyle "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor."

Education

George Elwood Smith was born on May 10, 1930, in White Plains, New York. After serving in the United States Navy for four years and taking courses at the University of Miami, Smith qualified as a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania in 1952, graduating with a B.S. in 1955. He then became a teaching assistant at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1959 with a thesis on the anomalous skin effect in bismuth.

Career

From 1959 until his retirement in 1986, Smith worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he led research into novel lasers and semiconductor devices. During his tenure, Smith was awarded dozens of patents and eventually headed the VLSI device department.

In 1969, Smith and Willard Boyle invented the charge-coupled device (CCD), for which they have jointly received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1973, the 1974 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Personal life and death

Both Boyle and Smith were avid sailors who took many trips together. After retirement, Smith sailed around the world with his life partner, Janet, for seventeen years, eventually giving up his hobby in 2003 to "spare his 'creaky bones' from further storms". He resided in the Waretown section of Ocean Township, Ocean County, New Jersey.

Smith died at his home in Barnegat Township, New Jersey, on May 28, 2025, at the age of 95.