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Jack Kilby, Inventor of the Integrated Circuit, Dies at 81
Jack St. Clair Kilby, retired TI engineer and inventor of the integrated circuit, died on June 20 in Dallas following a brief battle with cancer. He was 81.
Mr. Kilby invented the first monolithic integrated circuit, which laid the foundation for the field of modern microelectronics, moving the industry into a world of miniaturization and integration that continues today. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his role in the invention of the integrated circuit.
A man of few words, Kilby is remembered fondly by friends and associates for being in every sense of the word a gentleman and a gentle man. At 6 foot 6 inches in height, he was occasionally called the “gentle giant” in the press.
Kilby knew he wanted to be an engineer relatively early in life. When he was in high school, his father ran a small power company with customers scattered across the rural western part of Kansas. When a severe ice storm downed telephone and power lines, Kilby’s father worked with amateur radio operators to communicate with his customers. This event triggered the younger Kilby’s lifelong fascination with electronics.
He pursued that interest at the University of Illinois. World War II interrupted his studies, when Kilby joined the Army. Following the war, he returned to the University of Illinois, completing his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1947. Upon graduation, he took a position with Centralab in Milwaukee, where he first worked with transistors, the building blocks for integrated circuits. While at Centralab, he pursued graduate studies in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin and received a master’s degree in 1950.
Kilby moved to Dallas in 1958 to work for TI. As a new employee that summer, he was not yet entitled to the mass August vacation that was customary among TI employees at the time. It was in this relatively quiet time that the idea of the integrated circuit first came to Kilby.
“I was sitting at a desk, probably stayed there a little longer than usual,” he recalled in a 1980 interview. “Most of it formed pretty clearly during the course of that day. When I was finished, I had some drawings in a notebook, which I showed my supervisor when he returned. There was some slight skepticism, but basically they realized its importance.”
Mr. Kilby and TI officials put the circuit to the test September 12, 1958. It worked, and his invention transformed the industry. In 1960, the company announced the first chips for customer evaluation. Two years later, TI won its first major integrated circuit contract to design and build a family of 22 special circuits for the Minuteman missile. The integrated circuit remains at the heart of all electronics today.
Mr. Kilby held several engineering management positions at TI between 1960 and 1968, when he was named assistant vice president. In 1970, he became director of engineering and technology for the Components Group before taking a leave of absence to become an independent consultant. Mr. Kilby officially retired from TI in 1983, but he continued to do consulting work with TI. He maintained a significant relationship with the company until his death.
In addition to his TI career, Kilby held the rank of Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University from 1978 to 1984. In 1990, he lent his name to The Kilby Awards Foundation, which commemorates “the power of one individual to make a significant impact on society.” Its international awards program honors exceptional individuals for their contributions to society through science, technology, innovation, invention and education.
Kilby considered himself first and foremost an engineer, a profession he viewed as transforming ideas into practical realities. He held more than 60 patents for a variety of electronics inventions. Among these were the handheld electronic calculator and the thermal printer, both of which he co-invented.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Mr. Kilby received numerous honors and awards for his contributions to science, technology and the electronics industry. He is one of only 13 Americans to receive both the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology, the highest technical awards given by the U.S. government. In 1993, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology. Mr. Kilby also received the first international Charles Stark Draper Prize, the world’s top engineering award, from the National Academy of Engineering in 1989. In addition, he is honored in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s National Inventors Hall of Fame, celebrating individuals whose ideas have changed the world.
Kilby was the recipient of honorary degrees from several institutions of higher learning including the University of Miami, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois, Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Kilby leaves his family – daughters Janet Kilby Cameron of Palisade, Colorado, and Ann Kilby of Austin, Texas; five granddaughters, Caitlan, Marcy and Gwen Cameron of Palisade, Colorado, and Erica and Katrina (Katie) Venhuizen of Austin; and son-in-law Thomas Cameron – and friends, colleagues and admirers throughout the company, the industry and the world. His wife, Barbara Annegers Kilby, and sister, Jane Kilby, preceded him in death.
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Solar Sail Probe 'Probably Lost'
Sponsors of an experimental spacecraft designed to use light from the Sun to power space travel have conceded that the mission is probably lost. But they said the apparent detection of signals from the craft by tracking stations remained to be explained.
The privately funded Cosmos-1 craft was launched on Tuesday on a Russian rocket from a submarine in the Barents Sea.
Russian officials said the modified missile carrying the craft failed during firing of its first stage. Despite announcements by the Russian navy and space agency that the vehicle had been lost, the Cosmos-1 team held out hope throughout Tuesday that the launch had succeeded.
However, that hope has now all but faded. In a statement, mission sponsors the Planetary Society accepted the Russians' conclusion was probably correct. But, it continued, "there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources".
Apparent signals were detected by three ground stations, at Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka, Majuro in the Marshall Islands and Panska Ves in the Czech Republic, the Planetary Society said. It added that doppler data was also detected over one of these stations.
But Jiri Simunek, a scientist at Panska Ves, told the BBC News website that no signal had been detected by the Czech tracking station, "just noise". Nevertheless, Cosmos-1 scientists said there was still a slim possibility that the craft made it into orbit, though a lower one than expected.
A spokesperson for the Russian space agency said the Volna rocket booster carrying the spacecraft had failed 83 seconds after launch due to a problem with the first stage engine of the three-stage booster.
The Russian-built Cosmos-1 was launched aboard a modified Volna intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from the nuclear submarine Borisoglebsk.
The US$4 million experimental craft uses "solar sails" for power.
The sail reflects particles of light, or photons, from the Sun, gaining momentum in the opposite direction. Some think solar sails offer a cheaper, faster form of spacecraft propulsion. The acceleration from sunlight is very small; but the advantage of solar sailing over chemical propulsion is that the acceleration is sustained.
Cosmos-1 would have got faster and faster - and climbed higher in orbit - as time went on.
The 220lbs (100kg) craft had been scheduled to reach an 500 mile – (800km-) high orbit.
It was then to have taken pictures of Earth for four days before unfurling its eight aluminum-backed plastic sail blades into a 30m (100ft) circle. The US, European, Japanese and Russian space agencies also have solar sail programs in the offing.
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Twenty NSF-Supported Young Scientists and Engineers Receive Presidential Early Career Awards
Twenty young scientists and engineers whose work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) are receiving the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), considered to be the highest national honor for investigators in the early stages of promising research careers.
President George W. Bush honored the 20 leaders for their wide-ranging research accomplishments and for their significant educational contributions. The awards bring to 180 the number of NSF-supported PECASE recipients since the program began in 1996.
Thirty-eight additional recipients of this year's award were nominated by other federal agencies.
The 2004 PECASE awards announced include six engineers: Jennifer A. Jay, University of California, Los Angeles; Michael J. Garvin II, Columbia University; Michael A. Bevan, Texas A&M University; Martin L. Culpepper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Wei Li, University of Washington; and Jun Jiao, Portland State University.
Four computer and information scientists are also being honored. They include David V. Anderson, Georgia Institute of Technology; Elaine Chew, University of Southern California; Shalinee Kishore, Lehigh University; and ChengXiang Zhai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In the mathematical and physical sciences, Frank L.H. Brown, University of California, Santa Barbara; Oscar D. Dubon Jr., University of California, Berkeley; Sean Gavin, Wayne State University; and Daniel J. Mindiola, Indiana University, are receiving the award.
Three biologists honored are Derrick T. Brazill, City University of New York-Hunter College; Donna L. Maney, Emory University; and Russell S. Schwartz of Carnegie Mellon University.
The president also named education researcher Becky W. Packard of Mount Holyoke College; behavioral scientist Marianella Casasola of Cornell University; and Paul H. Barber, Boston University marine population biologist, to receive the award.
In addition to NSF's 20 awards, 12 are being given to scientists sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, nine to those backed by the Department of Energy, six from Department of Defense, four from Department of Commerce, three sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, and two each backed by NASA and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Nominees are chosen from 350 to 400 junior researchers and faculty who have received grants from NSF's Faculty Early Career Program (CAREER) in the same year of their nomination for the president's award. CAREER awards are among the most prestigious NSF gives, reaching the most-promising young researchers in science and engineering who have also translated their work into significant education activities.CAREER awards range from $400,000 to nearly $1 million over five years to support career research and education.
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Texas Technology Fund Gets a US$200 Million Start
Texas Governor Rick Perry on signed a bill that creates a US$200 million technology fund to be used to improve research at Texas universities and help startup technology companies get off the ground.
He proposed the Texas Emerging Technology Fund last year and made it one of his legislative priorities. He had sought about $300 million for that fund as well as another $300 million for his Texas Enterprise Fund, which was formed to help create jobs.
Lawmakers approved $280 million for both, with $100 million slated for the technology fund. Another $100 million is expected to be available for the technology fund from the state's emergency rainy day account.
Perry said the fund will help Texas remain competitive with other states in attracting high-tech researchers and employers. About 22 other states already have similar funds, said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who sponsored the Senate bill and spoke at Monday's event.
The money in the technology fund will be used to increase collaboration between the private and public sector, match research grants provided by federal and private sponsors to help innovators get capital and to recruit top research teams from other universities.
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Government Panel to Develop Digital Health Records Standards
A new advisory panel, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has been created to recommend ways for the private and public sectors to build an electronic health records network. The news was announced by HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, who will chair the advisory panel. The panel consists of 17 members from government and the private sector.
For the next two to five years, the panel will recommend how to keep patient data secure, while making this information compatible across different computer systems. Government health programs like Medicare will adopt the standards set by the panel. Although many health care professionals have been slow to make the transition, advocates say that electronic health records could reduce medical errors and lower costs of health care.
The Institute of Medicine report Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care says that to significantly reduce the tens of thousands of deaths and injuries caused by medical errors every year, health care organizations must adopt information technology systems that operate seamlessly as part of a national network of health information which is accessible by all health care organizations and includes electronic records of patients' care, secure platforms for the exchange of information among providers and patients, and data standards that will make the information uniform and understandable to all. It builds on the information and policy recommendations in Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century and To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System.
Other reports from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council have examined electronic health records and the issue of security. For the Record: Protecting Electronic Health Information describes two major types of privacy and security concerns that stem from the availability of health information in electronic form: the increased potential for inappropriate release of information held by individual organizations -- whether by those with access to computerized records or those who break into them -- and systemic concerns derived from open and widespread sharing of data among various parties. Networking Health: Prescriptions for the Internet examines ways in which the Internet may become a routine part of health care delivery and payment, public health, health education, and biomedical research.
