Biography

Carver Mead holds BS ('56), MS ('57) and PhD ('60) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, as well as honorary doctorates from USC ('91) and the University of Lund, Sweden ('87). Professor Mead taught at Caltech for over 30 years before retiring in 1999 as Caltech's Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering & Applied Science, Emeritus. Some of Dr. Mead's pioneering contributions include Electron Tunneling, Semiconductor Interface Energies, Invention of the MESFET, Scaling of VLSI Technology, Structured Very-Large-Scale-Integrated (VLSI) Circuit Design, the first VLSI Circuit Design course, Physics of Computation, Neuromorphic VLSI Circuit Systems, and Collective Electrodynamics. He also pioneered the Silicon Foundry concept and the Fabless Semiconductor business model. Among his many honors and awards are the National Medal of Technology, Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology, BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, NAE Founder's Award, IEEE John von Neumann Medal, Walter Wriston Public Policy Award, ACM Allen Newell Award, IEEE Centennial Medal, and the Lemelson-MIT Prize. Dr. Mead is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Dr. Mead is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Computer History Museum, a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, among others. He now lives in the Seattle area with his wife, Barbara, while also continuing to work in his Caltech lab regularly where he is engaged in a collaborative research project on low-temperature superconductivity.