Lawrence J. Giacoletto

Lawrence Joseph Giacoletto ( born November 14, 1916 in Clinton, Indiana; † 4 October 2004 in Okemos, Michigan) was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He was known among other things for his work in the field of semiconductor circuit technology, especially through the eponymous Giacoletto equivalent circuit for transistors.

Life

Giacoletto first studied at Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute. After successful completion of a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1938, he moved to the University of Iowa and received here a year later the Master of Science in Physics. His studies were interrupted by a five- year term of service as an officer in World War II. In 1952, he finally received his doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of Michigan. After his discharge from military service in 1946 Giacoletto began as a development engineer at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1956 he joined Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, where he worked as Manager of the Electronics Department Scientific Labs. From 1961 he taught as a professor of electrical engineering at Michigan State University until his retirement in 1987. Coinciding with this change, he founded the Cooperative Research Institute ( CORES ). Here he continued his research continues in the field of automotive electronics and developed ideas for the improvement of various products.

Services

His skills were taken for more than 70 technical publications and more than 23 patents. He was, among other instrumental in the development of the RCA color television system developed named after him equivalent circuit for transistors, the capacitance diode and made the first attempts to develop a transistor ignition system for cars.

Giacoletto published yet at the age of 83 years. He was author or co-author of the following books:

• RCA Laboratories transistor I Book. RCA Laboratories, 1956.
• Differential Amplifiers. New York, Wiley- Interscience, 1970, ISBN 0-471-29724-0.
• The Electronics Designers Handbook. McGraw -Hill, 1977, ISBN 0-07-023149-4.

Awards

Giacoletto contributed, among other things, the Awards Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member of the American Physical Society and the Sigma Xi and a number of committees.