Leo Esaki
12 March 1925 – present
Leo Esaki is a Japanese physicist who discovered electron tunnelling in semiconductors and invented the tunnel (Esaki) diode while working at Sony in the 1950s. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ivar Giaever and Brian Josephson, spent more than three decades at IBM in the United States, and later served as president of the University of Tsukuba.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Leo Esaki.
- Mahathir Mohamad (1925–present) Overlapped 101 years →
- Chen-Ning Yang (1922–2025) Overlapped 100 years →
- David Attenborough (1926–present) Overlapped 100 years →
- Jimmy Carter (1924–2024) Overlapped 99 years →
- Li Ka-shing (1928–present) Overlapped 98 years →
- Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) Overlapped 98 years →
Life events
Leo Esaki (Esaki Reona) was born in Osaka.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe received his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Tokyo and later completed a doctorate there in 1959.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter several years at Kobe Kogyo, he moved to the company that became Sony to work on semiconductor research.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHis work on heavily doped germanium p-n junctions revealed quantum tunnelling and led to the Esaki diode.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe joined the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, where he was later named an IBM Fellow.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe shared the prize with Ivar Giaever and Brian Josephson for experimental discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe was decorated with the Order of Culture by the Japanese government.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter more than three decades at IBM, he led the University of Tsukuba until 1998.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe received the Japan Prize for his work on superlattices and quantum wells.
Source: en.wikipedia.org