A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics, many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions.
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American inventor, physicist, and eugenicist. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
Herbert Kroemer is a German-American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for "developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics". Kroemer is professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, having received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1952 from the University of Göttingen, Germany, with a dissertation on hot electron effects in the then-new transistor. His research into transistors was a stepping stone to the later development of mobile phone technologies.
Jean Amédée Hoerni was a Swiss-born American engineer. He was a silicon transistor pioneer, and a member of the "traitorous eight". He developed the planar process, an important technology for reliably fabricating and manufacturing semiconductor devices, such as transistors and integrated circuits.
Jun-ichi Nishizawa was a Japanese engineer and inventor. He is known for his electronic inventions since the 1950s, including the PIN diode, static induction transistor, static induction thyristor, SIT/SITh. His inventions contributed to the development of internet technology and the information age.
James S. Harris is a scientist and engineer and fellow of IEEE, American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. His research primarily deals with optoelectronic devices and semiconductor material research.
A transistor is a semiconductor device with at least three terminals for connection to an electric circuit. In the common case, the third terminal controls the flow of current between the other two terminals. This can be used for amplification, as in the case of a radio receiver, or for rapid switching, as in the case of digital circuits. The transistor replaced the vacuum-tube triode, also called a (thermionic) valve, which was much larger in size and used significantly more power to operate. The first transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs was the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The three individuals credited with the invention of the transistor were William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The introduction of the transistor is often considered one of the most important inventions in history.
Ian Munro Ross FREng was an early pioneer in transistors, and for 12 years President of Bell Labs.
Chih-Tang "Tom" Sah is a Chinese-American electronics engineer and condensed matter physicist. He is best known for inventing CMOS logic with Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. CMOS is now used in nearly all modern very large-scale integration (VLSI) semiconductor devices.
John G. Linvill was an American professor (emeritus) of Electrical engineering at Stanford University, known for his pioneering work in higher education, integrated circuits and semiconductors, and for development of the Optacon reading machine for the blind.
Chenming Calvin Hu is a Taiwanese-American electronic engineer who specializes in microelectronics. He is TSMC Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the electronic engineering and computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. In 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers described him as a “microelectronics visionary … whose seminal work on metal-oxide semiconductor MOS reliability and device modeling has had enormous impact on the continued scaling of electronic devices”.
James C. Bliss was an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur best known for his pioneering role in developing technological aids for visually impaired people.
Bantval Jayant Baliga is an Indian electrical engineer best known for his work in power semiconductor devices, and particularly the invention of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT).
Sorab (Soli) K. Ghandhi was a professor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) known for his pioneering work in electrical engineering and microelectronics education, and in the research and development of Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (OMVPE) for compound semiconductors. He was the recipient of the IEEE Education Award "For pioneering contributions to semiconductor and microelectronics education" in 2010.
Lawrence Joseph Giacoletto was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He was known among others for his work in the field of semiconductor circuit technology, in particular by the eponymous Giacoletto equivalent circuit for transistors.
Dawon Kahng was a Korean-American electrical engineer and inventor, known for his work in solid-state electronics. He is best known for inventing the MOSFET, along with his colleague Mohamed Atalla, in 1959. Kahng and Atalla developed both the PMOS and NMOS processes for MOSFET semiconductor device fabrication. The MOSFET is the most widely used type of transistor, and the basic element in most modern electronic equipment.
Mervin Joseph Kelly was an American industrial physicist. He worked at Bell Labs from 1925 to 1959, in which time he held positions such as director of research, president, and chairman of the board of directors.
Srabanti Chowdhury is an Indian American Electrical Engineer who is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. She is a senior fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy. At Stanford she works on ultra-wide and wide-bandgap semiconductors and device engineering for energy-efficient electronic devices. She serves as Director for Science Collaborations at the United States Department of Energy Energy Frontier Research Center ULTRA.
Paul Richman is an American semiconductor physicist and author.
Hiroyuki Matsunami is a Japanese engineer, researcher and educator. He was awarded the IEEE Edison Medal in 2023 for his pioneering contributions to the development of silicon carbide material and its applications in electronic power devices. Currently, he holds the position of professor emeritus at Kyoto University and serves as a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University of Advanced Science.
