6 Famous Electronic Engineers

The modern gadgets we use today have come a long way from the interesting days of inventions of electrical and electronic pioneers. Electronic inventors in the past have made a great contribution in laying a solid foundation of the state of technology today.

Here, we take a retrospective into the contributions of some of the most famous electronic engineers.

1. Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry was an American scientist who has made several influential contributions to electromagnetism. Joseph Henry developed the electromagnet into a practical device. He also discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self-inductance when he was working to build electromagnets.

He also invented the electric relay and discovered mutual inductance independently of Michael Faraday. The electric telegraph invented separately by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Samuel F. B. Morse was based on Henry’s electromagnetic relay. The SI unit of inductance, Henry, is named in his honour.

2. Gordon Moore

Gordon Moore is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corporation. He is widely known for proposing the law named after him, Moore’s Law. The law is an observation/prediction that the number of transistors in ICs doubles every two years. The prediction has proven to be accurate and is used in the electronic industry till date.

3. John R. Pierce

John Robinson Pierce was an American engineer and author who has worked in various fields such as microwave technology, radio communication, psychoacoustics, and computer music.

With the help of his Bell Labs colleagues Claude Shannon and Barney Oliver, Pierce developed the concept of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM). He also supervised the work on building the first transistor at Bell Labs.

4. Steve Wozniak

Stephen Gary "Steve" Wozniak is an American inventor and electronic engineer who is best-known for co-founding Apple Inc. Wozniak developed the Apple I in 1976, he single-handedly designed the hardware, circuit board, and operating system for the Apple I. He also designed the Apple II in 1977 which is considered as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. 

Steve Wozniak, along with Steve Jobs, is considered as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution.

5. Dawon Kahng

Dawon Kahng was a Korean-American electrical engineer who is widely known for inventing the MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) – a basic element in all modern electronic equipment, and Floating Gate non-volatile semiconductor memory. 

Dawon Kahng worked with his colleague Simon Sze to invent the floating gate memory cell which is the foundation for various semiconductor memory devices. He has also done research work on ferroelectric semiconductors, high-frequency Schottky diodes, and luminous materials.  

6. Jack Kilby

Jack Kilby was an American electrical engineer who contributed in the realisation of IC (Integrated Circuit). He is also popular for several other inventions such as the thermal printer, and handheld calculator.

Electronics and communication engineering

Are you interested in technology and innovation? Be the next innovator by joining IST (Institute of Science & Technology) and learn Electronics and Communication Engineering.