Harvey C. Nathanson (October 22, 1936 – November 22, 2019) was an American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

who invented the first MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) device of the type now found in products ranging from iPhones to automobiles. MEMS devices, which are made using

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

fabrication techniques, are composed of small moving mechanical elements that generally range from 1 to 100 micrometres (0.001 to 0.1 mm) in size. Typical MEMS devices include the accelerometers found in

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

and video game controllers, and the

gyroscopes A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rotat ...

used in automobiles and wearables. Nathanson conceived the first MEMS device in 1965 to serve as a tuner for microelectronic radios. It was developed with Robert A. Wickstrom and William E. Newell at Westinghouse Research Labs in Pittsburgh, PA., and patented as a Microelectric Frequency Selective Apparatus. A refined version of the device was subsequently patented as the Resonant Gate Transistor. In his work developing similar devices, Nathanson pioneered a method of batch fabrication in which layers of insulators and metal on silicon wafers are shaped and undercut through the use of masks and sacrificial layers, a process that would later become a mainstay of MEMS manufacturing. In 1973 he patented the use of millions of microscopically small moving mirrors to create a video display of the type now found in digital projectors. In 2000 Nathanson was awarded the Millennium Medal by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for "outstanding contributions to the Society and to the field of electron devices." A graduate of

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, he holds more than 50 patents in the field of solid-state electronics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nathanson, Harvey C. 1936 births American electrical engineers Fellow Members of the IEEE 2019 deaths