Caltech Professor Wins $500,000 for Microelectronics Inventions

A microelectronics pioneer whose early work on minuscule transistors helped power the information age won the world’s single largest award for invention Thursday night.

Carver Mead, a professor of engineering and applied science at Caltech, was awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize.

Mead’s innovations include a standard amplifying device used in microwave communication systems, which people use every day when making telephone calls or dialing into the Internet, and a hearing aid powered by a digital microchip.

Mead is best known for his work on transistors, a project that he began in 1968 on a suggestion from Gordon Moore of Integrated Electronics--later known as Intel.

“Moore’s Law”--that computer chips would continue to double in power while remaining the same size and price--has since become a truism in the computer industry.

Mead said he plans to use the prize money to help support firms launched by his former students.