Leo Esaki Autograph

Profession:
(1925-) Japanese physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Ivar Giaever and Brian David Josephson for his work in electron tunneling in semiconductor materials which finally led to his invention of the Esaki diode, which exploited that phenomenon.

Year of Birth: 1925

Leo Esaki was born in 1925 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who made significant contributions to the field of semiconductor physics. He studied physics at Tokyo Imperial University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1949.

After completing his undergraduate studies, Esaki went on to work at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he completed his doctoral dissertation in 1957. During his time at the institute, he worked on understanding the properties of solid-state semiconductors. He was the first to discover a phenomenon called the Esaki diode, which is an important component of modern electronics.

Esaki went on to work at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1959. During this time, he worked on the development of the tunnel diode, which is a semiconductor device that operates on a negative resistance principle. This device was later used in microwave communications.

Esaki was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his discovery of the tunneling effect in semiconductors, which has been widely used in modern electronics. In addition to his Nobel Prize, he also received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Japan Academy Prize, the IEEE Medal of Honor, and the Order of Culture from the Japanese government.

Esaki retired from IBM in 1988 and became a professor at the University of Tokyo, where he taught until his death in 2015. Throughout his career, he published numerous papers in the field of semiconductors and solid-state physics and was a member of various organizations, including the American Physical Society and the Japan Association of Physics.

Leo Esaki was a pioneering physicist who made major contributions to the field of semiconductor physics and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work. His discoveries and inventions have been instrumental in the development of modern electronics. He was an inspiration for many scientists, and his work will continue to be remembered for many years to come.