Richard B. Merrill

Richard Billings Merrill ( b. 1949 in New York City; † 17 October 2008), also known by his nickname Dick Merrill, was an American inventor, engineer and photographer.

Life

Merrill was born the son of Frederick Hamilton Merrill and Joan Williams Merrill. In 1996 he married his wife Sengchanh ( Seng ) Phomphanh. The two lived in Woodside ( California).

Merrill earned a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering at Dartmouth College and worked since 1980 for National Semiconductor.

In 1997 he was a founder of Foveon and worked there until his death in 2008, caused by a cancer. He invented the technology of vertical color filter (vertical color filter ) of the Foveon X3 sensor, which is the heart of digital cameras from Sigma ( the SD9, SD10, SD14, DP1 and DP2).

Merrill's invention of the vertical color filter was originally based on a CMOS DRAM process. Later he refined his invention by using several epitaxially grown silicon layers for each of the three vertically stacked, color-sensitive layers.

Along with Dick Lyon and Carver Mead Merrill in 2005 received the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society for the development of the Foveon X3 technology. Shortly before his death in 2008, he was awarded the Kosar Memorial Award from the Society for Imaging Science and Technology for significant contributions to an unconventional photographic system.

For Carver Mead Merrill was the most creative engineer, he has ever met. Merrill explained his invention process in that you can achieve a great deal by looking for symmetries and patterns and a technological trend from one 's field in another.

February 8, 2012 Sigma honored its long -term business partner Merrill with the renaming of Sigma SD1 SLR in SD1 Merrill. In the Sigma SD1 Merrill the latest Foveon image sensor is installed.