Memorial Tributes Volume 23 (2021) / Chapter Skim
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WALTER L. BROWN
WALTER L. BROWN
Pages 38-47
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From page 39... ...
, as he was called by many, was born October 11, 1924, in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of Frederick and Maude Brown. Youth activities included active involvement with the Boy Scouts, earning the rank of Eagle Scout.
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From page 40... ...
The Navy was a central experience for Walter, with assignments in various Navy organizations like the War Plans Office, where he was a "gofer," and finally the Office of Naval Research and exposure to a real laboratory at the forefront of science. The Navy experience included an educational stint at Duke University, where he completed his undergraduate degree in physics.
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From page 41... ...
His earliest work there was in the Contact Physics Department and then the Transistor Physics Department as part of the exciting efforts to produce the newly invented transistor. Daily interactions with William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen and a host of other scientific luminaries created an excitement and stimulation for Walter that lasted throughout his career.
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From page 42... ...
A major concern -- the effect of the Van Allen radiation belts on solid state electronics -- was a perfect challenge for WLB. Relatively little was known about the distribution and time dependence of the radiation levels at the low Earth orbit in which the AT&T Telstar 1 spacecraft would fly when the design and construction of this first active communication sat ellite was begun.
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From page 43... ...
In order to understand the data obtained from his space experiments, Walter and his department colleagues used electron accelerators at Bell Labs and the Bell-Rutgers Tandem accelerator. The Rutgers-based facility played an essential role in calibrating the radiation instruments carried on the two Voyager spacecraft to the outer giant planets, into the solar system beyond, and ultimately into the local interstellar medium.
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From page 44... ...
Triggered by a question posed across the stimulating Bell Labs lunch table some weeks before the encounter of Voyager 1 with Jupiter in 1979, he quickly set up an experiment with his 2.0 MeV Van de Graaf to determine the sputtering rates by protons of water ice that might occur on the surfaces of the icy moons of Jupiter from the intense fluxes of electrons and protons trapped in the planet's radiation belts. This experiment revealed the new concept of electronic sputtering, which occurs at much higher rates than by the conventional nuclear sputter ing regime.
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From page 45... ...
Not only was Walter a leader in understanding the science, but his innate ability at engineering led to unique equipment designs, some of which are still used today. MeV ion beam analysis combined with channeling proved just the correct tool to measure the ion beam damage, to explore recovery of the damage, to find the critical lattice sites of implanted species, and to understand the numerous thin film structures and interfaces associated with Si processing.
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From page 46... ...
There was benefit to both Bell and Aarhus for a personnel exchange: Bell Labs scientists experienced the deep theoretical analyses at Aarhus, Aarhus scientists learned of new applications at Bell. Under Walter's leadership a personnel exchange program took shape in which over time at least five Bell scientists spent a year in Aarhus and a similar number of Aarhusians came to Murray Hill.
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From page 47... ...
Members of Walter's Bell Labs department are thankful to have been a part of his life and his excitement in science and engineering. In a laboratory like Bell, with its Nobel Prizes and extraordinary technical accomplishments, it was superb individuals like Walter, with his scientific expertise and extraordinary management skills, who epitomized the spirit and excellence of the institution and its people.
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