- John Robert Woodyard
John Robert Woodyard (1904 – 1981) was a
U.S. physicist who made important contributions to the technology ofmicrowave electronics and invented "doping" to improve the performance ofsemiconductor s.Life
Born in
West Virginia and educated inWashington , Woodyard showed an early enthusiasm forradio telegraphy and trained and worked as a radio operator and technician, at sea and on land. In 1928 he enrolled at theUniversity of Washington to studyelectrical engineering and graduated in 1932. He then pursued an academic career, eventually arriving atStanford University to work with Russel andSigurd F. Varian ,W. W. Hansen andEdward Ginzton .Morton "et al."(1985)]With Hansen, he developed the
Hansen-Woodyard principle foroptimal design ofdirectional antenna s. [ cite journal | title=A new principle in directional antenna design | author=Hansen, W. W. & Woodyard, J. R. | journal=Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers | volume=26 | year=1938 | pages=333–345 ] He was awarded hisPhD in 1940 and moved, with the rest of Hansen's team, toSperry Gyroscope Company to work onradar duringWorld War II . Woodyard filed manypatent s for Sperry, the most significant of which was for the process of "doping" to improve the performance of semiconductors. [US Patent No.2,530,110, filed, 1944, granted 1950] The demands of war work denied Woodyard the opportunity to pursue this line of research but, post-war, the technique became crucially important in thesemiconductor industry and proved the grounds of extensive litigation bySperry Rand .In 1945 Woodyard briefly joined
Purdue University before appointment at theUniversity of California at Berkeley to work withLuis Walter Alvarez andWolfgang K. H. Panofsky on the Berkeleyproton accelerator.An enthusaistic and able teacher, he continued to lecture after his retirement in 1971. Woodyard was survived by his wife, Ruth, and two daughters, Alix and Mary Inman.
Honours
*Fellow of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , (1963), "For Contributions to Electronic Engineering Education".References
Bibliography
* cite journal | title=Solid state physics research at Purdue | author=Henriksen, P. W. | journal=Osiris | volume=3 | year=1987 | pages=2nd Ser., 237–260 | doi=10.1086/368667
* cite web | author=Morton, P. L. "et al." | url=http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb4d5nb20m&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00182&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=oac | year=1985 | work=University of California: In Memoriam | title=John Robert Woodyard, Electrical Engineering: Berkeley | accessdate=2007-08-12External links
* cite web | url=http://www.ee.washington.edu/people/alumni/hall_of_fame/woodyard_john_r.html | work=University of Washington College of Engineering | title=John R. Woodyard | accessdate=2007-08-12
* cite web | url=http://photos.aip.org/images/catalog/woodyard_john_c1.jsp | work=Emilio Segrè Visual Archives | title=John R. Woodyard and William W. Hansen talking, equipment | accessdate=2007-08-12
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