SPIE Fellow Larry Hornbeck of Texas Instruments and Alfred Cho of Lucent Technologies, author of more than 40 papers for SPIE, are among 15 inductees to the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame for 2009. The announcement was made by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation on 11 February.
Dr. Hornbeck is the inventor of the digital micromirror device, used to create images in products ranging from cell phones to movie projectors and in non-display applications. A Fellow at Texas Instruments, he is a longtime author and program committee member for SPIE conferences, and has chaired conferences including one on Emerging Digital Micromirror Device Based Systems and Applications at SPIE Photonics West last month.
Dr. Cho is considered "the father of molecular beam epitaxy," the foundation announcement said. The process enabled the first of several types of diodes and the first field effect transistor operating at microwave frequencies. It is used in research and as a real-world demonstration of quantum physics.
See the foundation website for more information: www.invent.org/2009induction/index.asp.