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Leo Esaki was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his discovery of tunneling in semiconductors.
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Leo Esaki was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his discovery of tunneling in semiconductors. Tunneling is a quantum mechanical effect in which an electron passes through a potential barrier even though classical theory predicted that it could not. Dr. Esaki's discovery led to the creation of the Esaki diode, an important component of solid state physics with practical applications in high-speed circuits found in computers and communications networks. Dr. Esaki shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with physicists Ivar Giaever of Norway and Brian D. Josephson of Great Britain.
The Nobel Prize recognized achievements by Dr. Esaki while working as a researcher at Sony Corp. from 1956 to 1960. He joined IBM in 1960 as a researcher at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and was named an IBM Fellow in 1965.
Born on March 12, 1925 in Osaka, Japan, Dr. Esaki was educated at the University of Tokyo, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1947 and his doctorate degree in 1959. Before joining Sony, he spent nine years as a researcher at Kobe Kogyo Corp. in Japan.
In 1993, Dr. Esaki retired from IBM and accepted an appointment as president of the University of Tsukuba, considered Japan's most technologically advanced university.