Grant Oscar Gale (December 29, 1903 – April 14, 1998) was the S.S. Williston Professor of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Grinnell College Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846 when a group of New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College. Grinnell has the fifth highest endowment-to-st ...

Grinnell, Iowa Grinnell is a city in Poweshiek County, Iowa, United States. The population was 9,564 at the time of the 2020 census. It is best known for being the home of Grinnell College. History Grinnell was founded by settlers from New England who were ...

, the curator of Grinnell's Physics Historical Museum, and the namesake of the Grant O. Gale Observatory on the Grinnell campus. While an undergraduate at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

, Gale was a classmate of

John Bardeen John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the tran ...

with whom he kept in touch in later years. After graduation in 1928 Gale was offered an instructor position in physics at Grinnell College, and eventually became Professor of Physics. Until his death in 1998 he collected

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

equipment which had become obsolete and maintained a series of exhibits which now form the core of Grinnell's Physics Historical Museum. From Bardeen, Gale acquired early versions of the transistor. One of Gale's most noted students was his former baby sitter,

Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He is also credited wit ...

, co-inventor of the

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 ...

and founder of

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

. While Noyce was his student at Grinnell:

Gale had kept up with Bardeen and his work, and he obtained two transistors in 1948 while Noyce was an undergraduate. Noyce worked with Gale on the transistor and was thus among the first to encounter its limitless potential.

Gale's mentorship of Noyce was also instrumental in protecting him from disciplinary action when Noyce stole a

pig The pig (''Sus domesticus''), often called swine, hog, or domestic pig when distinguishing from other members of the genus '' Sus'', is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is variously considered a subspecies of ''Sus ...

from a nearby farmer (who actually was also the Mayor) and then slaughtered it in Clark Hall for a college luau. The prank would have earned him expulsion and jail time since livestock theft was a felony offense in Iowa, if not for Gale's intervention. Gale was also the physics instructor for Grinnell music student

Herbie Hancock Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he help ...

. The large "Alpha and Omega

Sundial A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat ...

" which sits next to the Noyce Science Center on the Grinnell College campus is named in honor of Gale's wife Harriet.Alpha and Omega Sundial
,

References

External links

Grinnell College Physics Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gale, Grant O. 1903 births 1998 deaths 20th-century American physicists Grinnell College faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni