Jay Wallace Lathrop (Bangor, Maine, 6 September 1927 - Asheville, North Carolina, 9 October 2022)[1] was an American engineer and inventor of photolithography.
Born in 1927 in Bangor, Maine, Lathrop studied physics in the University of Maine, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he get his BS, MS, and PhD.[2] When he worked as an engineer for the US Army's Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories in the 1950s, he needed to devise a "new proximity fuze to go inside a mortar shell only a couple of inches in diameter". The transistors that existed at that time were too large, and Lathrop tried to miniaturise them. Lathrop, together with Jim Nall, used photoresist from Eastman Kodak to create a mask on a germanium, thus inventing photolithography. They were awarded with $25,000 by the army for their invention in 1958; Lathrop bought "a new station wagon" with this money.[3][4]
Lathrop worked for seven years at the Diamond Ordnance Fuze Lab; he then found a job at Texas Instruments in Dallas, where he spent ten years and became Director of Advanced Technology for the Semiconductor Division; he worked there with Jack Kilby. In 1968 he became a professor at Clemson University.[2][3]
Lathrop died on October 9, 2022, at Asheville, North Carolina, and donated his body to the Medical University of South Carolina.[2]
References
edit- ^ Services, Asheville Mortuary. "Obituary for Jay Wallace Lathrop | Asheville Mortuary Services". Obituary for Jay Wallace Lathrop | Asheville Mortuary Services.
- ^ a b c "Obituary: Dr. Jay W. Lathrop". The Tiger. 18 November 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
- ^ a b Miller, Chris (23 June 2023). "The chip patterning machines that will shape computing's next act". Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
- ^ Miller, Chris (2022). Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. Scribner. p. 23. ISBN 978-1982172008.
Further reading
edit- Symposium on Microminiaturization of Electronic Assemblies, 1958
- Lathrop, Jay W. (January 2013). "The Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratory's Photolithographic Approach to Microcircuits". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 35 (1): 48–55. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2011.83. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 2562671. Retrieved 8 March 2024.
- Oral History of Jay W. Lathrop