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Southern Methodist University |
| School of Engineering | |
| Link to Dallas LEOS Section | Department of Electrical Engineering |
Notable
SMU Graduates:
- James
Cronin, BS Physics, SMU, 1951; MS, PhD Physics, University
of Chicago, 1953, 1955
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics to Professor James W. Cronin, University of Chicago, USA and Professor Val L. Fitch, Princeton University, USA, for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons. This award was for an unexpected discovery in an experiment devoted to a critical scrutiny of the validity of three related symmetry principles. Professor Cronin's Nobel lecture is available here.
- Robert
Dennard, BSEE, MSEE SMU, 1954, 1956; PhD, Carnegie Technical
Institute, 1958
Robert Dennard has the first patent on Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). DRAM is considered to be the most abundant man-made device on our planet.
- Gary
Pittman, BS in Chemistry, SMU, 1956
Bob Biard and Gary Pittman have the first patent on Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) which are possibly the second most abundant man-made device on our planet. Please click here for Bob Biard's resume.
- Frank
Vernon, BSEE, SMU, 1949; MSEE, University of California, Berkeley,
1952; PhD, EE and Physics, California Institute of Technology,
1959
Frank Vernon, along with Richard Feynman and Robert Hellwarth, wrote a 1957 paper [1] on masers (microwave amplification of stimulated emission of radiation). This fundamental paper was immediately applied to optical masers (lasers). The first laser was demonstrated on May 16, 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratory in Malibu, CA, about an hours drive from Caltech.
Reference
[1]. R.P. Feynman,
F.L. Vernon, Jr., and R.W. Hellwarth, "Geometrical Representation
of the Schrodinger Equation for Solving Maser Problems," J.
Appl. Phys. 28, 49 (1957).