Celebrating with Professor Carver Mead

Carver Mead, Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus, celebrated his 80th birthday on May 1, 2014. Professor Mead is best known for his pioneering work on VLSI (very-large-scale integration) circuit technology in the 1970s and 1980s, which made it possible to greatly increase the number of transistors placed on a single semiconductor chip. It is no exaggeration to say that the computer era we live in would not have been possible without VLSI technology. He remains as passionate today about science and engineering as he ever was. "There isn't really a time when you're too old to have new ideas," Mead says. 

A special evening to celebrate Carver Mead's birthday and accomplishments was co-hosted by the EAS Division Chair Ares Rosakis and Caltech Trustee Milton Chang (PhD ’69) along with his wife Rosalind Chang. During the celebration Chair Rosakis remarked, “Caltech Engineering remains a small community of isolated singularities, and by singularities I mean people who take risks, start new fields, work in a profound interdisciplinary fashion, talk to each other, focus, go deep and most importantly ‘establish new schools of thought’. It is unlike any other place in the world. Carver put it simply and succinctly in his oral history: ‘This is a really good place to get work done.’” [Caltech interview] [Share Your Memories] [ENGenious article]