Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 276
OCR for page 277
ALDERT VAN DER ZIEL
1910-1991
WRITTEN BY WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD,
C. M. VAN VLIET, AND P. H. HANDEL
ALDERT VAN DER ZIEL professor emeritus of electrical engi-
neering at the University of Minnesota, died on January 20,1991,
at the age of eighty.
Aldert van der Ziel was born in Zandeweer, the Netherlands.
On December 12, 1910. He earned a B.A. (1930), M.A. (1933),
and Ph.D. (1934) in physics from the University of Groningen,
the Netherlands. His Ph.D. thesis topic was written on spectros-
copy.
Upon completing his doctoral studies he joined the research
staff of the laboratory of the N. V. Philips Gloelampenfabrieken
in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, as a research physicist. His
tenure at that laboratory continued from 1934 to 1947. In 1947
he emigrated with his family to Canada, where he assumed a post
as associate professor of physics at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver. In 1950 he accepted a position as
professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minneso-
ta in Minneapolis. He remained on the staff of that department
until his retirement in 1980. Dr. van der Ziel served as a graduate
research professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville
from 1968 until 1989, where he usually spent a trimester per
year. He also served as a consultant to a number of industrial
companies.
Aldert van der Ziel was a prodigious scholar whose research
output in the field of electronic devices began at N. V. Philips
-
277
OCR for page 278
278
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
and continued up to his last year. He was also a remarkable
educator who taught and advised hundreds of students and
prospective scientists and engineers until he retired in 1980.
After his retirement he continued his research on noise in
electronic devices. In his research he supervised nearly eighty
doctoral students as well as numerous master's thesis students.
His doctoral students are working in industries and universities
in this country and in many foreign countries including China,
Korea, Japan, India, and Greece. He was the author of fifteen
books and five hundred research papers. A large fraction of
these paperswerejointwith his students; otherswere eitherjoint
with colleagues or alone. Examples of his books are Noise (Pren-
tice Hall, 1959), Solid State Physical Electronics (Prentice Hall,
1958,1968, and 1975), end Fluctuation Phenomena in Semiconduc-
tors (Butterworth, 1959~. His last book was Noise in Solid State
Devices and Circuits (Wiley, 1986~.
Van der Zie] emphasized to his students the importance of
relating physical observations to theory and interpretation. He
himself recognized that an understancling of the operation of an
electronic crevice was necessary to interpret the observed noise.
He also recognized the converse- understanding the observed
noise and its clepenclence on the operating parameters could
illuminate the physical process in the device. He was an expert
in all electronic devices and published papers on all of those
developed in this century up to the present year. These began
with vacuum tubes and later covered junction devices, field
effect transistors, Josephsonjunctions, to developments on high
electron mobility transistors.
Throughout his career van der Ziel sought a fundamental
understanding of I/fnoise (the noise outputversus frequency).
In 1980 he examined the possibility of a quantum basis for 1/f
noise and carried out experiments that verified this hypothesis
and explained his 1/f experiments. He and his students were
able to describe the 1/fnoise of many modem electronic devices
in terms of the simple basic quantum 1/f formula. This was
presented in a chapter of his last book, Noise in Solid State Devices
and Circuits.
OCR for page 279
ALDERT VAN DER ZIEL
279
Although the majority of his publications dealt with noise
phenomena, van der Ziel published on quite different fields. An
outstanding example of this was his paper on parametric ampli-
fication (JournalofApplied Physics, 19 (1948) 999-1006) that was
a preview of the discovery of the parametric amplifier. This laid
the basis for the later invention of maser and laser amplifiers. In
addition to his extraordinary list of publications, his research led
to a number of patents, eighteen in all. He served as a member
of the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Physics for a number
of years.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in
1977 and has been the recipient of a number of honors. He was
elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) in 1956, received the Western Electric award
of American Society for Engineering Education in 1967, ASEE's
Vincent Bendix Minorities in Engineering Award in 1975, and
the IEEE Education Medal in 1980. He was the recipient of two
honorary doctorates, the first from Universitie Paul Sabatier,
Toulouse, in 1975, the second from Eindhoven University of
Technology in 1981.
Aldert was interested in botany, cosmology, and theology. On
the last subject one of his nominators for the Vincent Bendix
award observed that, "He has made in addition a meaningful
contribution to the dialogue between science and religion, and
has taught and written in this demanding area."
Throughout his research and teaching, Aldert van der Ziel
has, directly and through his students, markedly influenced the
course of electronic science and technology during his lifetime.
His accomplishments will continue to benefit society for the
future. He will be missed as a dedicated and caring man.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
der ziel
