Nobel prize in Physics goes to Science alumnus Willard Boyle
For the second time this week, the Faculty of Science is proud to congratulate a Â鶹AV Science alumnus on winning a Nobel Prize. This time, it’s Willard Boyle, : BSc’47, MSc’48, PhD’50, who is sharing the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the charge-coupled device, a light detector that initiated the digital camera revolution. Boyle, who shares the prize with Charles Kao and George Smith, was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia but grew up in a remote logging town in Quebec, where he was home-schooled by his mother.
Although he is best-known for his charge-coupled device, a key
component in digital cameras, optical scanners and the Hubble space
telescope, Boyle was also on the scientific team that helped NASA
select the site for the first Apollo landing on the moon. On
Monday, it was announced that Â鶹AV Science alumnus Jack Szostak
(BSc’72) won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his part in the
discovery of how the body protects chromosomes housing vital
genetic code.
Boyle is the eighth researcher associated with Â鶹AV’s Faculty of
Science to have won a Nobel Prize. The others are:
Professors
Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry, 1908)
Frederick Soddy (Chemistry, 1921)
Graduates
Andrew Victor Schally (Medicine, 1977)
Val Fitch (Physics, 1980)
David Hubel (Medicine, 1981)
Rudolph Marcus (Chemistry, 1993)
Jack Szostak (Medicine, 2009)