Retired Bell Labs engineer Michael Tompsett of New Providence, recipient of the 2010 lifetime achievement award from the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr Tompsett with the pioneering cameras that he was responsible for including the first 2 CCD Cameras. HOBOKEN — When Willard Boyle and George Smith of Bell Labs accepted the 2009 Nobel Prize for an image sensor known as a charge-coupled device or CCD, there was one person notably missing from the podium in Stockholm.
Boyle and Smith created the CCD concept, but Bell Labs engineer Michael Tompsett actually holds the patent on the imaging device — now used in every digital phone and high-powered telescope — identified in the Nobel citation. But the Nobel Committee famously does not makes changes the award is announced and Tompsett will always be the guy who didn’t take home the prize.
Thursday night, however, Tompsett will get another, admittedly more parochial form of recognition when the New Jersey Inventor’s Hall of Fame honors him for a lifetime of invention that includes not only the world’s first CCD color television cameras, but 18 patents such as the first mixed-analog digital interface chip that is now the basis for all consumer electronics and heat-sensitive night-vision glasses.
The first thing he wants to say is he doesn’t hold a grudge.
The second thing he wants to say is: "I’d like to thank a lot of other people who worked with me to achieve these breakthroughs.
"Bell Labs stole the best brains from around the world, and I was privileged to work there," said the Cambridge University-educated physicist and engineer who now owns a medical software company in New Providence. "It’s nice to be recognized after all these years."
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Tompsett is one of 16 innovators who will be honored at the 22nd annual Inventors Hall of Fame ceremony in Hoboken. They include pioneers in fiber optics, a geneticist who may have discovered an autism-linked gene, a robotics engineer, a computer forensics expert, and a chemist who actually does make better skin cream.
There is a reason why New Jersey is the only state in the nation to boast it’s own Inventors Hall of Fame, said Gert Clarke, a retired nuclear physicist and chairwoman of the Hall of Fame Committee.
"New Jersey probably has more inventors per square foot than any place in the country," Clarke said. "We can’t get through a day without using something invented by a hall of fame inductee. These people enhance all our lives."
Past honorees included several Nobel Laureates and inventors who gave the world such diverse products as the cell phone, air conditioning, fiber optics, high octane gas, the Brooklyn Bridge, Valium, HDTV, the golf tee, the ice cream cone and the little widget that screws into the sand and keeps umbrellas from being blown away at the beach.
Boyle and Smith were themselves 2008 state hall of fame inductees. Other past winners were Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, guitar and tape-recording genius Les Paul and Oscar Award-winning sound engineer Richard Ranger.
The ceremonies acknowledge the high-caliber accomplishments of state residents, Clarke said, and also encourage the spirit of creativity and collaboration in the upcoming generation.
Linda Brzustowicz, a Rutgers University psychiatrist being honored for her work in identifying genetic markers for autism, agreed that the current academic innovation climate is discouraging.
"Undergraduate and graduate students exposed to research in the current environment, where funding is a constant worry, are less like to see a career in academic research," Brzustowicz said. "The lasting effects of these funding cuts will be the loss of a generation of new scientists."
NEW JERSEY INVENTORS HALL OF FAME 2010 AWARD WINNERS
Inductees into the Hall of Fame
• Michael Tompsett — Bell Labs - Pioneer Status - Multiple patents including semi-conductor and optical imaging, night-vision cameras, imaging devices, solid state circuitry and conversion of analog to digital signals.
• Andrew Chraplyvy
• Robert Tkach — Bell Labs - Optical Fiber Systems
• Kenneth Walker
Inventors of the Year
• Nicholas Girard — Stevens Institute - Wireless communications
• Bijan Harichian — Lever Brothers - Chemistry, personal care industry
• Richard Caizza — Becton, Dickenson Co. - Health care technology
Special Award
• Timothy Chang — NJIT - Ultra high precision systems, genetic systems, robotics and motion control
Trustees Award
• Ralph Izzo — CEO, PSE&G - Energy-effecient programs and tackling the challenges of climate control
Innovators Award
• Yun-Qing Shi — NJIT - Digital forensics and security
• Leonard Cimini — Bell Labs/AT&T - High-speed wireless communications
• Linda Brzustowicz — Rutgers University - Genetic methods for diagnosing autism
Graduate Student Award
• Jingjing Zhang — NJIT - Configuration of optical networks
• Xiaoling Chen — Stevens - Statistical modeling
• Asli Ergun — Stevens - Biomedical bone graft substitutes
Advancement of Invention Award
• Vikki Hazelwood — Stevens - Pioneering process for translating medical research into commercial applications