2 Responses to 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics: Boyle and Smith present the CCD in this 1978 video!

1. Paul Wu says:

   October 14, 2009 at 5:27 AM

   congratulations Bell Labs and Lucent~~~

   Reply
2. Willard Boyle embroiled in controversy says:

   December 23, 2009 at 3:18 PM

   MONTREAL — From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail
   Published on Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009 12:00AM EST
   Last updated on Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009 2:28AM EST
   The Canadian physicist embroiled in a bitter controversy over his recent Nobel prize can always look to Guglielmo Marconi for solace.

   Nova Scotian Willard Boyle and American George Smith are the latest Nobel winners in physics to face an acrimonious challenge from rivals who claim credit for a scientific advance, but they’re far from the first.

   The credit Mr. Boyle and Mr. Smith are getting for pioneering digital photography in the 1960s, Mr. Marconi got for radio.

   Mr. Marconi received the Nobel prize in physics 100 years ago for inventing the radio, even though Nikola Tesla already had the patent. The dispute went on until 1943, when the United States Supreme Court upheld Mr. Tesla’s patent. He had died a few months earlier, and Mr. Marconi kept his Nobel along with most of the credit.

   Now, Eugene Gordon and Mike Tompsett, two scientists who worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the 1960s with the two recent Nobel winners, are waging a bitter campaign to discredit them.

   The men say the laureates had nothing to do with turning an invention called the charge-coupled device into image capturing technology. The Nobel winners took out patents on part of the technology, however.

   Mr. Gordon has been particularly upset, saying his superior, Mr. Boyle, laughed him out of the office when he presented a key part of the idea in 1969.

   But even if the men challenging Mr. Boyle and his partner managed to prove their claim, the Nobel committee is unlikely to change its mind. The committee has an immense tolerance for error and disputed claims, experts say.

   “A cursory inspection will reveal the juries that pick the laureates have often shown bias, lapses of judgment, and bitter infighting,” Burton Feldman wrote in The Nobel prize: A history of genius, controversy and prestige.

   “In the sciences, a number of quarrels, scandals and even lawsuits have erupted over claims to priority or credit for collaborations honoured by Nobels.”

   In an age where most scientific research is done in teams, such disputes have led some to question whether Nobel prizes in the sciences should be awarded to no more than three individuals.

   The lines between the disciplines are disappearing, making the categories less relevant, according to Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, associate editor at the American Chemical Society.

   “Science these days operates very differently than it did more than 100 years ago. The days of gentleman scientists are over, and collaborations among groups of researchers have become the norm,” Mr. Mukhopadhyay wrote this fall.

   In the Bell Labs dispute, other colleagues of Mr. Boyle and Mr. Smith have pointed out that half a dozen men had key parts in the development of the image sensor.

   Carlo Séquin, a former Bell Labs physicist who is now a professor at Berkeley, said the two Nobel winners worked on fundamental concepts. The two other men deserve credit for creating the first working sensor, he told IEEE Spectrum, an online engineering publication.

   Bell dropped the technology before practical applications were brought to market. Mr. Séquin said it was only when the Japanese picked up the idea 10 years later that the invention was finally perfected.

   Reply

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