Suggestion

[IntegratedValve]

Who is the Bob Pease, Bob Widlar, or Jim Williams of today? 

Someone on this forum with equivalent skills and experience? 

If so I would love to see them shortly interviewed by Dave, maybe following same interview questions on eeweb.com.

Thanks.

[SeanB]

Well, Vincent Himpe is pretty good, and has the record for the longest Amp Hour interview, where even Chris and Dave barely got a word in edgewise.  Free_Electron on the forum, he really needs another episode to continue, the amp hour one was way too short.

[IntegratedValve]

Well, Vincent Himpe is pretty good, and has the record for the longest Amp Hour interview, where even Chris and Dave barely got a word in edgewise.  Free_Electron on the forum, he really needs another episode to continue, the amp hour one was way too short.

Cool, what did he invent? Which episodes?

And I just remembered Jeri Ellsworth with her recent invention Cast AR 3D.

[SeanB]

He is a generalist with a very broad knowledge, you can call him a Jack of All Trades, one who can do almost any function in the electronics industry.

[nctnico]

Who is the Bob Pease, Bob Widlar, or Jim Williams of today? 

Someone on this forum with equivalent skills and experience? 

Probably lots of people. The thing is that today's brilliant inventions aren't made by a single person but a team of people.

@SeanB: I agree. Free_electron knows a lot, has seen a lot and can tell about in a way it makes sense. Unfortunately for him the latter disqualifies him as a genius 

[c4757p]

Free_electron knows a lot, has seen a lot and can tell about in a way it makes sense. Unfortunately for him the latter disqualifies him as a genius 

This ability to explain, of course, is at least a big part of why Pease and Williams are famous. Lots of people have invented things; these two could write about them.

Widlar's claim to fame seems to be his rather entertaining eccentricity.

[IntegratedValve]

I mean Bob Pease is famous for his Voltage-to-Frequency Converter
Widlar invented the OpAmp IC
Jim Wiliams power electronics guru

Even if today innovations are all teamwork, there's still a unique part or theory to be created by someone unique, unless we are heading communism 

[w2aew]

I'm afraid that we're unlikely to find the likes of a Jim Williams or Bob Pease again - these guys had the unique ability to break down complex topics and explain them in ways that laymen could understand.  They had great intuition about how things work, and how to exploit their properties.  Their legacy will live on in the books, publications, application notes, etc. that they produced.

Widlar was another character - brilliant and quite eccentric.  There are a lot of other analog gurus that are around that helped to shape the analog IC industry - Brokaw, Gilbert, Addis, Erdi, and many more that I'm forgetting.  The accomplishments of these wizards is often behind the scenes, since they weren't as widely published as Williams and Pease.

Amateur, part-time "educators" like myself can only hope to come close to the likes of these guys!

Oh, and I agree - Vincent's AmpHour show was great!  About 2.5x longer than my appearance!

[c4757p]

I mean Bob Pease is famous for his Voltage-to-Frequency Converter
Widlar invented the OpAmp IC
Jim Wiliams power electronics guru

Of course. And Camenzind's NE555 was used easily as much as Pease's LM331, but we don't hear of him nearly as much. It's not about what they invented, it's about how they talked about it.

Amateur, part-time "educators" like myself can only hope to come close to the likes of these guys!

I would definitely count you and Vincent among the gifted explainers, even if neither one of you is likely to become as famous as Bob Pease.

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi Group,

Don't forget Robert C. Dobkin.

Bob Dobkin co-founder and CTO of Linear Technology.

His work includes:

LM317
LM118
LM199 and the improved version LTZ1000
LT1083 The first low dropout regulator

Jay_Diddy_B

[rsjsouza]

I once had the honor to meet Bob Mammano, the father of SG1524 and the whole family of PWM controllers. A very nice person that could also put in simple words very tough concepts.

[IntegratedValve]

Dr. Fujio Masuoka   

[SArepairman]

how about dds and rf chip guys?

whoever made the thing inside of cell phones must be pretty good eh

[vk6zgo]

Who is the Bob Pease, Bob Widlar, or Jim Williams of today? 

Someone on this forum with equivalent skills and experience? 

If so I would love to see them shortly interviewed by Dave, maybe following same interview questions on eeweb.com.

Thanks.

Strangely,in over 40 years in Electronics,I had never heard of any of these guys before I joined this forum!

When I first started out,most of the "wizards" we revered were already either dead,retired,or doing something else.
Such people as Farnsworth,Zworykin,Armstrong,etc.

Bardeen,Brittain,& Schockley were still around,though!

[IntegratedValve]

how about dds and rf chip guys?

whoever made the thing inside of cell phones must be pretty good eh

Could be work of a team...but lets look for who established the theory of RF and microstrips. 

[nctnico]

how about dds and rf chip guys?

whoever made the thing inside of cell phones must be pretty good eh

There is a man called 'Jim Thompson' hanging around in the newsgroup sci.electronics.design. Appearantly he is one of the early analog designers from the 60's still doing complicated analog IC designs today (according to him he designed parts of popular GPS chips). Sometimes he shows off clever stuff but explaining how it works exactly is not his strong suit.

Could be work of a team...but lets look for who established the theory of RF and microstrips. 

Probably long gone. George Boole who invented the Boolean algebra on which every logic circuit (computer) is based did that around 1850. That is already over 150 years ago. Same goes for DSP algoritmes, digital signal processing, etc, etc. All invented long before these had any practical use.

[kebogen]

He is a generalist with a very broad knowledge, you can call him a Jack of All Trades, one who can do almost any function in the electronics industry.

I really agree with you.

[IntegratedValve]

Listen what he says at 30:09.