The Marconi International Fellowship is awarded annually to an individual who has significantly contributed to the advancement of the technology of communications through scientific or engineering discoveries, inventions, or innovations. The 1989 Fellow is Robert N. Hall, a physicist who recently retired from the General Electric Research and Development Center, Schenec tady, N.Y Hall this week will be awarded $35,000 in recognition of his invention of the semiconductor injection laser in 1962, a device that now drives CD players, laser printers, and most optical fiber communications systems.
According to a GE research center spokesman, the idea for the semi-conductor injection laser came to Hall in June 1962, after he attended a conference on electronics. Stimulated by research on high-intensity radiation from gallium arsenide being conducted by scientists at RCA Corp. and MIT, a team under Hall’s direction moved swiftly to build and test, within three months, a working semiconductor laser.
...
