Henry I. Smith, a professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's department of electrical engineering and computer science, has been named MIT's Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor in Electrical Engineering. The chair is named after the founder and chairman of the Cleveland-based Keithley Instruments Inc., a company that produces very-high-input impedance electronic instruments and semiconductor fabrication test equipment, and his wife.
Smith is known as the originator of X-ray lithography, a technique that permits the manufacture of ultrasmall-scale electronic semiconductor devices. He has conducted research on the performance of electronic devices, such as transistors, by shrinking the size of their parts. Recently, Smith's research has centered on efforts to create radically new electronic devices based on the wave-like properties of electrons, which become apparent when they are confined to dimensions below 100 nanometers. Smith earned his B.S. in physics (1958) from Holy Cross College and his M.S. (1960) ...
