DPReview: https://www.dpreview.com/news/2948041351/ccd-image-sensor-pioneer-george-e-smith-passes-away-at-95
NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/science/george-e-smith-dead.html
George E. Smith died at the age of 95. Working with Willard S. Boyle at Bell Labs, he invented the CCD image sensor technology.
Always sad when a foundational person in our field passes. However, Boyle and Smith invented the charge-coupled device (CCD) and recognized its potential for sensing light. As far as inventing a CCD image sensor, in an engineering sense, the sole inventor on that patent is Michael Tompsett who worked for Smith at Bell Labs. This blog should get that detail correct even if mainstream press does not.
ReplyDeleteThe Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 ... to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor"
DeleteComplain with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences then lol.
I guess you were sleeping in 2009. There was a massive controversy about this - which mostly stems from the overreaching citation by the Nobel Prize committee. If they had just said "invention of the CCD, used for imaging" there would be no discussion and I have no quarrel with Boyle and Smith receiving the Nobel Prize for the CCD, although some did. Checkout the misc articles in IEEE Spectrum describing the controversy.
DeleteIndeed it has been awarded as co-inventor of CCD TECHNOLOGY. Nobody assumed/mentioned CCD IMAGE SENSOR....
ReplyDelete