Among Koreans, the person who came closest to winning the Nobel Prize in Physics

Dr. Daewon Kang, a world-renowned semiconductor physicist born in Korea, was born in Seoul on May 4, 1931. He graduated from the Department of Physics at Seoul National University in 1955, and received a master’s degree in 1956 and a doctorate in 1959 from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Ohio State University.

Afterwards, Dr. Daewon Kang joined Bell Telephone Laboratories (currently AT&T Bell Laboratories), the world’s top research laboratory at the time, and developed the transistor MOS-FET in 1960. Unlike BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor), the world’s first semiconductor, MOSFET has a structure that allows for high integration and mass production of semiconductors, and is today used as a basic element for Intel’s CPU, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics’ DRAM.

In addition, MOSFET is recognized as the most basic and groundbreaking invention in advancing into the IC era (integrated circuit) beyond the early electronic circuit era represented by vacuum tubes and transistors, and is the foundation of all digital electronic circuits currently being commercialized. . In 2009, Dr. Daewon Kang, who was recognized for his contributions, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Patent and Trademark Office along with Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, and Nobel.

In addition, Dr. Daewon Kang received the ‘Stewart Valentine Medal’ in the field of physics from the Franklin Institute in 1975, which had been awarded to Albert Einstein of relativity theory and Stephen Hawking of quantum cosmology, etc., and in 1986, he was awarded the ‘Proud Graduate of the Ohio State University College of Engineering’ He received a lot of attention from the American scientific community, including receiving a Distinguished Alumni Award. Just by looking at the fact that 105 of the 2,000 recipients of the Franklin Medal over the past 180 years have received 107 Nobel Prizes, we can gauge how meaningful the Franklin Institute’s award is to Dr. Daewon Kang’s research achievements.

Dr. Daewon Kang, who was the first Korean to be a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Bell Telephone Laboratories, made important contributions in the fields of NAND flash floating gate memory cells and EL (electroluminescence), and authored more than 35 papers. , in addition to serving as an author or co-author of books, holds 22 U.S. patents.

After retiring from Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1988, Dr. Daewon Kang became the founding president of the NEC Research Institute, an organization established to conduct long-term basic research in computer and communication technology. However, in May 1992, on his way back to New Jersey after an academic conference, he collapsed at the airport due to a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and passed away at the age of 61 due to aftereffects during surgery. Survivors include his wife, Kang Young-hee, and five children.

The person who changed the paradigm of the semiconductor industry