|
|
|
| Herbert Kroemer Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering |
|
Herbert Kroemer shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for developing semiconductor hetero-structures used in high-speed and optoelectronics. His basic research helped usher in a new era, one that made compact disc players, high-speed fiber optics, cell phones and many other conveniences part of our everyday world. Kroemer’s theoretical interests were clear in his first job with the German Postal Service in 1952. “That was in the early days of transistors,” he says. “I became interested in why they were so slow.” Always ahead of his time, in 1976 Kroemer persuaded the Department of Electrical Engineering at UCSB to put all of the resources it had available for expanding a small semiconductor research program into the emerging compound semiconductor technology instead of into mainstream silicon technology. He became the first member of the new research section, founding what has grown into a large group that is second to none in the physics and technology of compound semiconductors. |