George Elwood Smith was born on May 10, 1930, inWhite Plains, New York. After serving in theU.S. Navy for four years, Smith qualified as a sophomore at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1952, graduating with aB.S. in 1955. He then became a teaching assistant at theUniversity of Chicago, where he received hisPh.D. in 1959.[2] The title of his thesis wasThe Anomalous Skin Effect in Bismuth.[3]
Smith worked atBell Telephone Laboratories inMurray Hill, New Jersey, from 1959 until his retirement in 1986, where he led research into novel lasers and semiconductor devices. During his tenure, Smith was awarded dozens of patents and eventually headed theVLSI device department.[4]
Both Boyle and Smith were avid sailors who took many trips together. After retirement, Smith sailed around the world with his life partner, Janet, for seventeen years, eventually giving up his hobby in 2003 to "spare his 'creaky bones' from further storms".[4] He resided in theWaretown section ofOcean Township, Ocean County, New Jersey.[5]
"For the invention of the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of digital cameras and other widely used imaging technologies."
^Staff."NJ man's discovery lands Nobel Prize",WPVI-TV, October 6, 2009. Accessed November 27, 2013. "George E. Smith, 79, holds a display with a photograph of the first video telephone and some early CCD chips at his home in Waretown, N.J., Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009, after it was announced that he had won the Nobel Prize in physics."
