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JERRY WOODALL RECEIVES THE
On May 9, 2002, President George W. Bush announced that Jerry M. Woodall is one of the National Medal of Technology Laureates for 2001. This medal is the highest honor in technology in the United States. The National Medal of Technology was established by Congress in 1980 and recognizes men and women who embody the spirit of American innovation and have advanced the nation’s global competitiveness. Jerry is an active member of the Electron Devices Society and is the C. Baldwin Sawyer Professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Jerry is a pioneer in the research and development of compound semiconductor materials and devices. The citation for this award reads as; “For the invention and development of technologically and commercially important compound semiconductor heterojunction materials, processes, and related devices, such as light-emitting diodes, lasers, ultra-fast transistors, and solar cells.” Jerry became a Fellow of the IEEE in 1990 “For contributions to the preparation of compound semiconductor structures and devices for high-speed and optoelectronic applications.” In addition, he received the IEEE Jack A. Morton Technical Field Award in 1984, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000, was the Chairman of the EDS sponsored Device Research Conference in 1987 and was a member of the Electron Devices Society Administrative Committee from 1993-1999. He also was made a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1989, a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1982, an Electrochemical Society Fellow in 1992, and an American Vacuum Society Fellow in 1994. After receiving a B.S. in metallurgy from MIT he earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1980. Prof. Woodall spent most of the early and mid parts of his career at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center where he rose to the rank of IBM Fellow. He and Hans Ruprecht pioneered the liquid-phase epitaxial growth of both Si doped gallium arsenide (GaAs) high efficiency infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs), and gallium aluminum arsenide (GaAlAs), which led to his most important research contribution: the first commercially viable heterojunctions. They built it from gallium aluminum arsenide mated to gallium arsenide (GaAlAs/GaAs), and it remains to this day as the world's most important compound semiconductor heterojunction. This demonstration that high quality AlGaAs could be grown on GaAs launched a new era in semiconductor material and device research, which resulted in devices such as semiconductor lasers used as the signal source and pump lasers used in optical amplifiers used in optical communications systems. The semiconductor lasers are also used in the read-out of the encoded patterns in CDs and DVDs as well as many other applications.The heterojunction LEDs have led to very bright LEDs which are used in automobile brake lights, traffic lights and a vast array of applications for illumination and indicator lights. Many new areas of solid-state physics have evolved from his work, including the semiconductor superlattice, low-dimensional systems (quantum wells and dots), and resonant tunneling. Fully half of the entire world's annual sales of compound semiconductor components are made possible by his research legacy. The Electron Devices Society congratulates Jerry for this highest of recognition for his contributions to electron devices. Alfred U. Mac Rae
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