- Lester Hogan
Clarence Lester "Les" Hogan (
February 8 ,1920 –August 12 ,2008 ) was an Americanphysicist and a pioneer inmicrowave andsemiconductor technology.He grew up as a brother to three sisters in
Great Falls, Montana , where his father worked for theGreat Northern Railroad . After graduating fromMontana State University with a degree inchemical engineering he joined theUnited States Navy in 1942. He did some work onacoustic torpedo es inChesapeake Bay , and when being approached byBell Laboratories , subsequently went to the Pacific theatre to train submarine crews in the use of that technology.After the war he did post-graduate studies at
Lehigh University and obtained a Ph.D. in Physics. He then joined Bell Labs in 1950. A couple of months later he invented the MicrowaveGyrator (a device which can simulate inductance by substituting an "RC" circuit, thus getting rid of awkward coil assemblies). He worked under Bill Shockley, inventor of thetransistor andNobel Prize laureate. From 1953 through 1958 he was a professor atHarvard University , when he was asked by Dan Noble to join Motorola inPhoenix, Arizona as general manager of the semiconductor operation.In 1968 he changed to
Fairchild Camera & Instrument as manager ofintegrated circuit andmicroprocessor development, taking eight senior executives (nicknamed "Hogan's Heroes") with him. This move caused Motorola to sue Fairchild (unsuccessfully) for theft of trade secrets. He later became president of Fairchild and vice-president/ general manager ofFairchild Semiconductor ,Palo Alto, California .In 1975 he received IEEE's "Frederik Philips Award". In 1978 he was honoured with the "AeA Medal of Achievement". In 1993 he received the "MTT-S Microwave Pioneer Award". In 1996, a chair at the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the
University of California, Berkeley was named in his honor. On October 20, 1999, he was inducted as "Eminent Member" ofEta Kappa Nu , "the society’s highest membership classification, to be conferred upon those select few whose technical attainments and contributions to society through leadership in the field of electrical and computer engineering have resulted in significant benefits to humankind".Lester Hogan died in
Atherton, California from complications ofAlzheimer’s Disease at the age of 88.Martin, Douglas (August 15, 2008). [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/technology/16hogan.html C. Lester Hogan, Physicist Who Fought Motorola, Dies at 88.] "New York Times "]References
External links
* [http://www.stanford.edu/group/mmdd/SiliconValley/SiliconGenesis/LesterHogan/Hogan.html Stanford University (Silicon Genesis)] (Interview with Les Hogan – 1995)
* [http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/silicongenesis/hogan-ntb.html Stanford University (Silicon Genesis)] (Interview with Les Hogan – 1995)
* [http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu/about.html SU Silicon Genesis Project] ("An Oral History of Semiconductor Technology")
* [http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1:19978188&refid=ink_key Electronic Engineering Times] ("The Hogan bombshell" – October 30, 1997)
* [http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/ice/s17mf.htm Smithsonian Chips] ("Motorola vs Fairchild case files")
* [http://aeanet.org/Events/60thGala2003.asp AeA] (Gala: "60th anniversary of the founding of AeA" – October 16, 2003)
* [http://www.etakappanu.org/eminentmembers/eminent.html HKN] ("HKN Eminent Members List")
* Biography - Clarence Lester Hogan, Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions , Jan 1958 [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1125174]
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