The top ten analog engineers
PR megaforce Mark Alden over at National Semi tipped me off to an article in EETimes about the top 10 analog engineers. The article has a comment section but apparently you can’t even read the comments unless you register. So I figure I would post about the article here so we can all share our opinions without the obligatory WEB2.0 data-mining.
As to my opinion, well the first three picks are a little suspect, Philbrick and Solomon were businessmen that got their start in engineering. Maybe my pal Bob Pease can comment about Philbrick since he worked for them. No, I think to rank on the list of top engineers you should be working as one for most of your career. Even high-level folks like Monticelli and Gilbert, who are both fellows at their respective companies, have never gone over to the management side— they are hard-core technical. Then there is the whole issue of analog IC design vs. analog design. Analog IC designers are far more well known, since they are allowed and even encouraged to talk about their parts, since you really couldn’t copy them unless you have the same process and fab resources, as well as the design, simulation and layout tools. So we all know about Widlar, but what about all the analog geniuses that worked at Tektronix and Hewlett Packard and Picosecond Pulse Labs for that matter? They don’t publish all their stuff since keeping it secret is essential to staying in business, but we know they are pretty good. Just yesterday Jim Williams was telling me that all of us noticed how the analog engineers at HP were using diode-connected JFETs to get low leakage 20 years ago.
Now I’m not saying Philbrick and Gordon (who I never heard of) and Solomon should not be on the list. I think it is just digital and stupid to try and make a ranking. If you care about log amps and multipliers than Gilbert has to be number one, nobody has caught up to ADI in that sector. But there are a lot of other aspects to analog design, even above and beyond the whole IC/system-level thing. I have an affinity for wild men, so I probably would put Widlar at number one. If you want to see why go look at the datasheet for an LM10 (pdf). He designed it in 1977 and is still has world-class features and specs, even when he had to use a crappy process with no good PNP transistors. But I would not even know whom to pick for number two. Solomon was a great designer for conceptualizing the FET input op amp, but Dan Culmer did the actual IC design. And where is Rod Russell in the FET amplifier story? It was a process guy at National that figured out how to do JFETS that allowed Solomon and Culmer to do their thing in the first place. I already told you Williams would readily admit to studying the greats. Same for Pease, he also admits to standing on the shoulders of giants. The other thing that troubles me is who did not get mentioned. OK, so lets just look at analog IC designers. Where are Harvey, Erdi, Fulligar, Garth Wilson, Carl Nelson, Bowers, and the dozens of others that made great contributions? Where the heck is Frederiksen for crying out loud? Where are Lew Counts and JoAnn Close? Nello Sevastopoulos and the MF10? Where are my buddies Bill Gross and Don Sauer, who did the LM13600, a really remarkable part with an astounding applications section in the datasheet? Where is Camenzind and the 555 timer? And then lets look at the whole application crowd. Pease and Williams are surely cornerstones, but where is Walt Jung and Walt Kester from ADI? Where is Wild Bill Klein from TI not to mention Dave Freeman and Bonnie Baker? I still have my copy of the Linear and Interface Circuits Applications from TI, dated 1985. Where are the authors of that, Pippenger, Tobaben and McCollum? Don’t forget those great app notes form Unitrode back in the 1980s.
And once you cover the IC designers and applications people in their own lists, what about the thousands of analog geniuses that worked at system companies and could not publish their accomplishments since it would let others copy them? Who where the folks at LeCroy that made their scopes so good? Where are the lists for person at Teledyne that designed one of the cleverest voltage-fed half-bridge converters I have ever seen? And that brings up another important dichotomy: the difference between analog power and analog signal path. Those are two different skill sets. Filters and converters and op-amps are also signal chain subsystems that deserve a list of their own as well as references and temp sensors.
On top of all this we have some of the great signal integrity consultants, Henry Ott, Howard Johnson and Eric Bogatin to name a few. Don’t they deserve a list of their own?
No, there is no such thing as a top ten analog. That is trying to put digital thinking on a real-world analog issue. But feel free to let us know who you think are the analog engineering greats in the comments below.
[Update– Darren Holdstock noted that the IEEE link in his comment below was causing the blog to suppress comments following his, including the great Walt Jung, so I here is the link Darren wanted us to see.]
Robert Shumake commented:
Robert Shumake commented:
Alan Eskovitz commented:
njp commented:
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Bob Pease commented:
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Mark Fortunato commented:
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Brad Wood commented:
Darren Holdstock, UK commented:
dws commented:
nonOperationalAmplifier commented:
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