1996 Hall of Fame Recipients [print page]
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Mr. Richard K. Pefley
Richard K. Pefley was appointed Chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Santa Clara University, upon receipt of his Master of Science degree from Stanford University in 1951. He became interested in alternative fuels in the early 1970s and became one of the leading authorities in this field, his expertise being highly regarded in the United States and in many other countries. Most of his work regarding alternative fuels involved the use of methanol as an alternative to gasoline.
Mr. Pefley has also been active in research in solar energy, artificial lung development, human calorimetry, the solution of heat transfer problems, and gas dynamics of the Polaris missile.
He has produced more than 70 publications during the past 20 years, most of which are related to alternative fuels. In 1994, he presented a paper to the Royal Technical Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Mr. Pefley has been recognized as an outstanding teacher of mechanical engineering by his peers and his many students during his career at Santa Clara University. By directly involving his students in his numerous research projects, he encouraged many of them to become knowledgeable in the expanding field of alternative fuels.
Dr. William J. Perry
At the time of his induction into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, Dr. William J. Perry is Secretary of Defense under President Clinton.
Dr. Perry received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Penn State, all in mathematics. Dr. Perry’s engineering contributions have been in the field of defense technology and, in particular, electronic reconnaissance. He emerged as a leading technologist in that field while serving as Director of Sylvania General Telephone’s Electronic Defense Laboratories in the 1950s. Dr. Perry became a Silicon Valley pioneer in 1964 with his co-founding of ESL, Inc., a high-technology research and development company that, among other achievements, developed the world’s first mobile direction finding system in 1971. This led to the Guardrail system, which became the U.S. military’s largest airborne reconnaissance system.
From 1977 until 1981, Dr. Perry was Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering under President Carter and was the recipient of several prestigious awards, including: the American Electronics Association’s 1980 Medal of Achievement; the Department of Defense’s 1980 and 1981 Distinguished Public Service Medal; NASA’s 1981 Distinguished Service Medal; in 1981, the Federal Republic of Germany’s Knight Commander’s Cross; and, in 1982, France’s Grand Officier de l’Ordre National du Merite.
Dr. Perry served as Executive Vice President of Hambrecht and Quist Inc., a high-technology investment banking firm in San Francisco. He was a director of FMC Corporation and a trustee of MITRE Corporation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1985 he founded Technology Strategies and Alliances. He has served as a member of numerous committees and commissions and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been featured in many publications including the book, “Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon Valley Pioneers.”
Dr. David A. Thompson
Dr. Thompson, an IBM Fellow at the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, is a pioneer in the design and development of thin film and magnetoresistive (MR) recording heads, which have enabled enormous increases in the capacity of data storage devices. He recognized very early that the magnetoresistive effect could be used in data recording and was the first to propose many of the technical innovations adopted by the industry. He holds many key patents related to MR head technology.
Vast increases in storage capacity make it possible to create massive databases and to store images, video, and sound, as well as text. Currently, storage system capacity is growing at 60 percent per year, and this is attributable for the most part to MR heads, which are used in all IBM storage products and are becoming a standard for the industry.
Dr. Thompson received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1962, 1963, and 1966, respectively, where he began his research on magnetic thin films. He continued his work on magnetic recording when he joined IBM in 1968 at the Research Division’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. In 1980, he was named an IBM Fellow, the company’s highest technical honor. He moved to the Almaden Research Center in 1987.
Dr. Thompson is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and the IEEE Magnetics Society. He is a past president of the IEEE Magnetics Society, having previously served as vice president and secretary-treasurer. In 1992, he received the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award “for pioneering work in miniature magnetic devices for data storage.” He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1988, and in 1993 received the Inventor of the Year Award from the New York State Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law Association, Inc.