About Herbert Kroemer
Herbert Kroemer (German: [ˈhɛʁbɛʁt ˈkʁøːmɐ]; August 25, 1928 – March 8, 2024) was a German–American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics." His research into transistors was a stepping stone to the later development of mobile phone technologies. == Education == Herbert Kroemer was born on August 25, 1928, in Weimar, State of Thuringia. His father was a civil servant, while his mother was a housewife; neither of them had a high school education. Kroemer excelled in physics at school, letting him advance faster than his peers in the subject. Kroemer received his Diplom in 1951, and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics the following year, both from the University of Göttingen. His doctoral thesis was on hot electron effects in the then-new transistor. == Career and research == From 1952 to 1968, Kroemer worked in a number of research laboratories in Germany and the United States. In 1968, he was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1976, focusing its semiconductor research program on the emerging compound semiconductor technology rather than on mainstream silicon technology. Kroemer always preferred to work on problems that are ahead of mainstream technology, inventing the drift transistor in the 1950s and being the first to point out that advantages could be gained in various semiconductor devices by incorporating heterojunctions.
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