Obituary of Jerome J. Tiemann

Jerome J. Tiemann, PhD, Physicist and Inventor, Dies at 74.

Jerome Johnson Tiemann, Ph.D., independent co-inventor of the Charge Coupled Device (CCD), and an analog correlator integrated circuit, died of an apparent heart attack on Tuesday, April 25, at his home in Schenectady, N.Y. He was 74.

Dr. Tiemann was an inspired scientist and engineer who lived and worked during a golden age of modern scientific advancement, in part brought about by competition with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. Virtually every electronic consumer device we take for granted today--digital cameras and camcorders, scanners, fax machines, and cell phones--can trace its technological lineage to methods and devices that he, together with others, and especially his close colleagues William E. Engeler and Richard D. Baertsch, helped to invent, develop, make practical, and/or apply in new ways. His pioneering work in digital signal processing ushered in significant advances in medical imaging, including high-resolution ultrasonic imaging, CAT scanners, improved MRI machines, as well as military radar and sonar technologies. His work on signal compression techniques suggested the possibility and then demonstrated the practicality of High Definition Television (HDTV). He demonstrated a precursor to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and developed new types of silicon devices that, used as sensors inside running jet engines, lead to dramatic improvements in fuel efficiency and noise abatement. And, with his colleagues, he invented methods and devices for significantly lowering the cost and power usage of the Global Positioning System (GPS), greatly expanding its application in consumer and military spheres.

His early work on electron tunneling (1959-1964) led to a citation in Leo Esaki’s 1973 Nobel Lecture for Physics. He also developed the first practical method of manufacturing commercial tunneling devices and then helped to design circuits incorporating these devices, including the first “vest-pocket transmitter” (1959). He did pioneering work in piezo- optics. His work on thin-film magnetic heads anticipated the application of semiconductor manufacturing processes to hard disk head design (1966).

In 1970 he co-invented the Surface Charge Transistor which Bell Labs had independently invented as the Charge Coupled Device (CCD), as it is known today. As Jerry and his colleagues would say “Bell Labs got all the publicity, but we got all the patents.” In February 1971, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore wrote to Jerry to say "…your paper at the Solid State Circuits Conference…was far and away the best of [those] relating to charge coupled devices.”

In 1972, he published an important paper on Random Access Memory (RAM). In 1974, Jerry co-developed and demonstrated the Surface Charge Correlator, which was 100 times faster than existing processors. In 1979, Nobel Laureate Leo Esaki honored Dr. Tiemann by inviting him to Japan.

Dr. Tiemann won many industry awards and recognitions, including IR-100 Awards in 1971 and 1974, and became a Coolidge Fellow in 1975 (GE’s highest Research and Development honor). In 1976 he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the IEEE (for clarifying the understanding of interband tunneling and surface charge transport, and for their application to new devices). He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1984 “for his creativity and leadership in developing advanced electronics for communications, medical diagnostics, radar, and video information processing.” He joined the Whitney Gallery of Technical Achievers at General Electric in 1990.

Dr. Tiemann was a natural problem solver; the 135 patents he invented or co-invented ranged from a super-pure synthetic diamond to a mirror that reflected without the “mirror image,” from a fail-safe circuit breaker to an automatic ice maker that produced ice cubes that remained separate in the freezer. But more than being an inventor, he was also a patient teacher and an enthusiastic mentor, giving special attention to younger scientists and using his uncanny knack for simplifying the complex to help explain and make accessible science to lay people. Dr. Tiemann was born February 21, 1932 in Yonkers, New York and grew up in Hastings on Hudson, New York. He graduated from the Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York (1949), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.Sc. 1953), and earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from Stanford University and came to GE’s Corporate Research and Development Laboratory in 1957, where he worked for more than 44 years. This was the year the integrated circuit was patented, and it was also the year he married Adrian Rooke, his wife of 49 years. During his time at Stanford, he was invited to work at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and at the University of California’s Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

At home, Jerry’s talents were equally broad and appreciated. He played jazz piano with a style of chord voicings that earned him the nickname “mittens”. His knowledge of chemistry translated seamlessly to candy and fudge-making. His soldering skills produced elegant silver jewelry from original drawings he drafted, his pieces often highlighting stones he had found, cut, and polished with tools of his own making. He designed and made furniture for his family with wood from trees he felled on his own property. Captain of the 1953 MIT Varsity Cross Country team, Jerry was again a medal-winner for GE’s Corporate Relay team (in the age category 50-59) in 1990. He also loved the outdoors. When his boys were young, he and Adrian organized overnight hikes in the Adirondack mountains where they maintained their summer residence. Jerry’s love of science and his prodigious memory allowed him to identify and discuss the plants along the way with a botanist’s exactitude and depth, while the rich diversity of mountains and streams would tap his equally impressive knowledge of geology and mineralogy.

He is survived by his wife Adrian Rooke Tiemann, Ph.D., his brother Karl Tiemann of Owego, New York, his sister Lydia Lynn of Big Flats, New York; two sons, Michael Damian Tiemann and wife Amy Page Tiemann, Ph.D. of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Bruce Gregory Tiemann, Ph.D. and wife Valeria Damiao, Ph.D., of Longmont, Colorado; three grandchildren: Miranda Page Tiemann of Chapel Hill, and Jai Damian Tiemann and Shay Julian Tiemann of Longmont. Dr. Tiemann is also survived by several nieces and nephews.

Jerry was preceded in death by his own parents, Ruth Darling Johnson Tiemann, aged 94, and Roland Wilfrid Tiemann, aged 96, and by his father-in-law, Denis Morley Rooke, aged 86, and his mother-in-law, Velma Howell Rooke, who died at age 100 in 2005.

An informal ceremony for family and friends to share and celebrate memories of Jerry’s life will be held at the Mohawk Room of the Glen Sanders Mansion in Scotia, New York on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 1pm. Guests are welcome to arrive at any time after 12 noon.