Jim Williams has died from a stroke
Jim Williams has died from a stroke
Jim Williams, staff scientist at Linear Technology and Consulting editor at EDN magazine suffered a severe stroke Thursday night June 9th, 2011. He passed away at 10:15 Sunday night June 12th, 2011. EDN has posted an obituary. Please check back to it often since there are sure to be more comments and we are adding some pictures of Jim and his friends that should appear in the article later today.
I spoke with Jim on the day he died. We talked about his recent article about acoustic thermometry. We also discussed two future articles; one about a low-distortion sine-wave oscillator and want will be his last, a 100A electronic load. EDN has the finished manuscripts for those articles and they will run in our August 11, 2011 issue and Sept 22, 2011 issue, respectively. We gabbed for almost a half-hour, and then I begged off since there is always work to do here at EDN. I promised to see Jim and the Silicon Valley eFlea in two days. He had his stroke a few hours later. I feel terrible about cutting him short to go do work I could have done in the evening.
I am working on re-publish all of Jim articles here on EDN. I already have scanned and OCRed (optical character recognition) his first, “Heavy-duty power supply regulates either voltage, current, or power,” James M. Williams, Teledyne Philbrick, EDN May 5, 1975. I will let you know soon as I get it posted. Let me know in the comments if you think these old Williams articles should be in the print magazine as well.
Here is Jim’s office at Linear Tech back in 2007. Please add any remembrances of Jim in the comment section of the main obituary.
Jim and National Semiconductor Fellow Dennis Monticelli at the recent CHRS antique radio swap meet.
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Here is Dennis Monticelli, Jim Williams, and Jim’s good friend Len Sherman, senior scienticst at Maxim Integrated Products.
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[Update:] Laura Lang figured out how to link to Jim’s videos, ignore my rant below, here are her links;
This is the 775 Nanovolt Noise:
This is the 1ppm Settling Time:
This is the Diode Turn On Time:
This is Low Noise, High Voltage DC/DC:
Any why I despise brightcove and flash and adobe-there is a video of Jim, but I can’t give you link, you have to navigate to it in the Javascript craptastic festival of programming:
http://www.edn.com/video/video.php
go to the Linear Tech channel, there is a settling time video from Jim. Click on the tiny craptaccular little dots at the bottom and you can see a second video, a nanovolt noise measurement video.
Then go back to the top-level page http://www.edn.com/video/video.php
And click on the Design Ideas page, and you can see Jim’s great one-take video we took in his lab at Linear Tech, “Measure nanoamps to ensure accurate computer clocks”
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This blog post described some of Jim’s famous pranks, as well as others.
Pranking bosses, friends, and competitors.
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My article describing Jim’s nanoampere measurements
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Other blogs and articles from Jim
Be it ever so high-tech, THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.
Tripping the light fantastic: a case study in circuit design
Jim Williams with a breadboard
Jim Williams acoustic thermometer
Jim Williams acoustic thermometer redux
New Jim Williams article on HV power supplies
Audio Precision to the rescue, of Jim Williams no less
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Artciles with less direct connection to Jim, but some mention of him.
EDN readers list engineering heroesAnalog Devices DAC soup can from the 1970s
CHRS California historical radio society antique vintage swap meet
Bob Widlar cherry-bombs the intercom speaker
The Intersil Analog Aficionados party
Prototyping techniques: things to know before pulling the trigger
dewittu commented:
Jim's death is a great loss to the engineering profession. His work (articles and books) are a lasting testament to his skill as a circuit designer. I never knew Jim, but I read his articles starting in the 1970s. Posting all of Jim's articles in PDF is an excellent idea.
Marshall J Bell commented:
Is that an LM-12 frequency meter Jim and Dennis are holding?
Dave Meekhof commented:
A loss to the EE profession.
I still have the "Jim Williams" papers (circa 1989) all about good analog design.
T A BABU commented:
Gentle soul. A great loss to us.My hearty condolences to his family
Ouaret Nabil commented:
We have lost not only one of the greatest scientist but also one of the kindest and gentlest people I have ever had the privilege to know.
He was always with great help to us, even he knew we were just a beginner team.
My thoughts are with his family at this sad time.
Adjoebidee commented:
It is very sad Jim Williams passed away. In my younger ages those databooks with opamp appnotes (National Semiconductor, Linear Tech) were literaly in my bed. I love that stuff. Consuming all the ideas of Bob, Jim, Walter and a few others gave me the idea I never ever could become a comparable or even a better engineer. Stupid thought -of course- many people THINK this but never dare to say so.
Fortunately I am very happy that these guys helped me to appreciate my profession.
Further I would like to warn everybody not to put all those nice articles away behind 'pay websites' like Scribd and many others. It is not their work. Even EDN articles one cannot even find anymore (try the Jim Williams page and try to find some of his '94 articles) EDN should be aware that engineers would love to have these articles as PDF files somewhere on a big fat server ;-)
Gary Milliorn commented:
This is terribly sad news. I am by no means an analog guy, but whenever EDN published one of his articles, it was a must-read.
His ability to communicate was unequalled. EDN could have just put "A Jim Williams article!" on the front cover, it didn't really matter what the subject was, it was sure to be interesting. And, almost always, with scope shots showing "it really works."
Gunnar Englund commented:
I am a straight guy. But I LOVED Jim! He was fun, surprising and very very good. I still keep his articles in a worn binder. And I still go back for entertaining reading. He visited Sweden several times and I met him in person. Great moments!
Chris Gammell commented:
Jim was one of my first references for analog, but will continue to be for years to come. I'm comforted that he will live on forever in his amazing app notes and writing (and video too!). I consider him a true rock star of analog and he will be missed.
Walt Jung commented:
This is very sad news, indeed. I knew Jim for a few years when I worked for LTC back in the late 80's. He was surely a dedicated and passionate analog designer/writer, and one to learn (lots) from.
Jim will be missed. The idea of a PDF archive for his articles is a good one, please go for it.
Dave Kress commented:
Jim was one of glue-sticks that held our analog industry together -- he had friends everywhere -- he never felt like a competitor. He wrote for Analog Dialog in 1976 -- a weigh scale. A great loss to us all.
Tim Sobering commented:
I'm greatly saddened by this. My condolences to his family and friends.
scott wurcer commented:
Truly sad. I knew Jim from the beginning back in Bldg. 20. He already was a go to resource for anything electronic. When Bldg. 20 was razed to make way for the Stata Center I anonymously mailed him the plaque and door knob from his old office, but he guessed who sent them.
