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Calvin Quate | |
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| Born | Calvin Forrest Quate (1923-12-07)December 7, 1923 Baker, Nevada, U.S. |
| Died | July 6, 2019(2019-07-06) (aged 95) Menlo Park, California, U.S. |
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| Known for | |
| Awards | IEEE Medal of Honor(1988) National Medal of Science(1992) Kavli Prize(2016) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Electrical engineering |
| Institutions | PARC Sandia National Labs |
| Thesis | Traveling wave tubes as low noise amplifiers (1950) |
Calvin Forrest Quate (December 7, 1923 – July 6, 2019) was an American electrical engineer and physicist, who was one of the inventors of theatomic force microscope. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics andElectrical Engineering atStanford University.
He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from theUniversity of Utah College of Engineering in 1944, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1950.[1]
Quate is known for his work on acoustic and atomic force microscopy. The scanning acoustic microscope, invented with a colleague in 1973, has resolution exceeding optical microscopes, revealing structure in opaque or even transparent materials not visible to optics.
In 1981, Quate read about a new type of microscope able to examine electrically conductive materials. Together withGerd Binnig andChristoph Gerber, he developed a related instrument that would work on non-conductive materials, including biological tissue, and the Atomic Force Microscope was born.[2] AFM traces surface contours using a needle to maintain constant pressure against the surface to reveal atomic detail.[3] AFM is the foundation of the $100 million nanotechnology industry. Binnig, Quate and Gerber were rewarded with theKavli Prize in 2016 for developing the Atomic Force Microscope.
Quate was a member of theNational Academy of Engineering andNational Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the 1980IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award and theIEEE Medal of Honor in 1988 for "the invention and development of the scanning acoustic microscope."[4] Quate became a senior research fellow at thePalo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1984.[4] In 2000, he became a recipient of theJoseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science. He was a fellow of theNorwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[5] Quate died on July 6, 2019, at the age of 95.[6][7]
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