George E. Smith biography
Date of birth : 1930-05-10
Date of death : -
Birthplace : New York City,U.S.
Nationality : American
Category : Science and Technology
Last modified : 2011-12-16
Credited as : scientist, co-inventor of the charge-coupled device, invented the CCD sensor
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Smith was born in White Plains, New York. Smith served in the US Navy, attained his BSc at the University of Pennsylvania in 1955 and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1959 with a dissertation of only three pages.
He worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey from 1959 to his retirement in 1986, where he led research into novel lasers and semiconductor devices. During his tenure, Smith was awarded dozens of patents and eventually headed the VLSI device department.
In 1969, Smith and Willard Boyle invented the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD),for which they have jointly received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1973, the 1974 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Both Boyle and Smith were avid sailors who took many trips together. After retirement Smith sailed around the world with his wife, Janet, for seventeen years, eventually giving up his hobby in 2003 to "spare his 'creaky bones' from further storms."He currently resides in Waretown, New Jersey.
