Gordon Kidd Teal
Gordon Kidd Teal ( born January 10, 1907 in the South Dallas; † 7 January 2003) was an American chemist, known for contributions to semiconductor manufacturing and the development of the transistor.
Life
Teal made 1927 a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics at Baylor University. He then went to Brown University and graduated there in 1928, a master 's degree in physical- inorganic chemistry from. Followed in 1931 by the Promotion to Ph.D. by Brown University for his work on the electrochemical properties of germanium, which he created parallel to his job at Bell Laboratories ( from 1930). In the time of the Great Depression, he was only in the part-time at Bell Labs and worked at this time with Harold Urey at Columbia University, for example, to research into heavy water.
He is known for producing the first high-purity germanium single crystals (1951, based on the old Czochralski method ) for the transistor manufacturing ( with engineer John Little), a milestone in the early transistor development. After the development of the top transistor ( 1948) by William B. Shockley and other Teal showed with Morgan Sparks at Bell Labs, such as by a modification of the method of production of germanium single crystals ( with doping of the melt) bipolar transistors could be made of a crystal ( npn junction transistor ). The patent on these grown junction transistors (English, German " transistor having grown pn junction " ) Shockley had filed as early as 1948, but they could be only in 1951, thanks to the practically achieved by Teal and colleagues advances in crystal growth realized.
William Shockley described the beginning of Teal with little support -driven development of high-purity germanium ( and soon silicon) single crystals at Bell Labs later as probably the most important scientific development in the early years in the semiconductor industry after the announcement of the transistor.
In 1953 he joined Texas Instruments (TI), then a small company, but was in his native Dallas. He built there to the central laboratory. In 1954, he developed there the first commercial silicon transistor ( presented at an IRE conference in Dayton (Ohio ) in May 1954) and in 1957 a chemical process for producing high purity silicon. Both contributed greatly to the success of the company. In 1963 he was International Technical Director at TI and at times lived in France, England and Italy. In 1965 he left TI for several years and was director of the Materials Research Institute of the National Bureau of Standards. 1968 until his retirement in 1972 he was back at TI as vice president and chief scientist for Corporate Development.
In 1968, Teal the IEEE Medal of Honor and in 1984, the Centennial Medal of the IEEE. He was a Fellow of the IEEE, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemists, the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He was married to Lana Smith and had three sons. With his wife he was in Leitungsrat the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art