Kroemer, Herbert, 1928–, German physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1952. Kroemer was a researcher at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, N.J. (1954–57), and at Varian Associates in Palo Alto, Calif. (1959–66). In 1968 he joined the faculty at the Univ. of Colorado, and in 1976 he became a professor at the Univ. of Calfornia, Santa Barbara. Kroemer and Zhores I. Alferov, who worked independently of each other shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics with Jack Kilby for inventing and developing fast opto- and microelectronic components based on layered semiconductor structures, known as heterostructures. Developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the technology underlies a broad array of modern devices and systems, including satellite communications, cellular telephones, fiber-optics, bar-code readers, and laser pointers.
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