Geoffrey Dummer

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Photograph of Geoffrey Dummer in the 1950s
Photograph of Geoffrey Dummer in the 1950s

Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer, MBE (1945), C.Eng., IEE Premium Award, FIEEE, MIEE, USA Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm (1909 – September, 2002) is an electronics author and consultant who is credited as being the first person to conceptualise the integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, in the late-1940s and early 1950s. Dummer passed the first Radar trainers and became a pioneer of reliability engineering at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern in the 1940s.

Born in Hull, Dummer studied electrical engineering at Manchester College of Technology starting in the early 1930s. By the early 1940s he was working at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern (later to become the Royal Radar Establishment).

His work with colleagues at TRE led him to the belief that it would be possible to fabricate multiple circuit elements on and into a substance like silicon. In 1952 he presented his work at a conference in Washington, DC, some six years before Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments was awarded a patent for essentially the same idea.

In the UK of course, Dummer's groundbreaking ideas were derided and dismissed, and no finance for further development was available by either private or public finance. This was similar in occurrence to the ideas of Barnes Wallis' Swallow, or the technology of the Whittle jet engine.

Dummer was admitted to a Nursing home in Malvern in 2000 due to a stroke and died in September 2002, aged 93.

Contents

[edit] Achievements

[edit] Occupations

  • Head of a specialist team of component fields at the Radar Research Establishment.
  • Member of the Joint Services Radio Components Research and Development Technical Committee.
  • Member of the Radio Components Standardization Committee.
  • Chairman of the R.C.R.D. Panel on Transistor Components.
  • Chairman of the R.C.R.D. sub-committee on Fixed and Variable Resistors.
  • Chairman of the N.A.T.O. sub-committee on standardization of Resistors.
  • Represents the United Kingdom on the N.A.T.O. sub-committee for the standardization of Capacitors.

[edit] Published works

  • An Elementary Guide to Reliability, Butterworth/Heineman: 5th Edition. ISBN 0750635533 (with R.C. Winton and Michael H. Tooley)
  • Miniature and Microminiature Electronics, Pitman: 1961. ISBN 0273436309 (with John Wiley Granville)
  • Electronic Inventions and Discoveries, Institute of Physics Publishing: 4th Edition. ISBN 075030376X
  • Electronic Equipment Design & Construction, McGraw-Hill. ISBN 007018092X

[edit] Author / Co-author of

  • Radio and Electric Components (Volumes 1-6)
  • Modern Electric Components
  • Electric Equipment Reliability (Pitman)

[edit] Founding Editor

  • (International Journal) Microelectronics and Reliability (Elsevier Science)

[edit] External links


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