Obituary of Seymour Keller (1922-2012)

(embedded in oituary, above )

Seymour P. Keller, who long served as a staff member, manager, director and senior advisor to the Director of Research at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY died June 6, 2012 at the age of 89 in Brighton MA. Seymour was born on July 5, 1922 in the Bronx, NY of Jewish immigrant parents. He graduated from De Witt Clinton High School and then attended Springfield International College for a short time before entering the Army as a member of ASTP, a college training program.

In ASTP he studied engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and medicine at Cornell. After the War ended he used the GI Bill to earn his BS and PhD in chemistry under Joseph Mayer at the University of Chicago. After post-docs at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University, he joined IBM Research in Poughkeepsie, NY. When Seymour joined the fledgling IBM research group in 1953, housed in a converted pickle factory, he pulled together a group to study phosphors. This group produced many significant papers, both experimental and theoretical, on deep centers in phosphors and other large energy gap materials. Much of this work was concentrated on zinc sulfide and especially strontium sulfide, sometimes doped by ion implantation. His paper with J.E. Mapes and G. Cheroff, ‘Studies on Some Infrared Stimuable Phophors’,(PR1957) drew considerable interest.

In 1960, the group for a period mounted an effort to build switches utilizing electroluminescent and photoconductive elements. Shortly thereafter, Seymour took over the management of the semiconductor materials area in the Physical Sciences Department, whose team over the next few years was responsible for several major advances, including developing the GaAs process that was used in the invention of the semiconductor laser, in a virtual tie with General Electric in 1962. Today the semiconductor laser is the most widely used and biggest dollar value device in the laser market.

In recognition of his management skills Seymour was soon named as Director of the Physical Science Department, which was composed of some 200 scientists, engineers, and technicians and which, from the mid-sixties until the mid-seventies, carried out most of IBM’s condensed matter fundamental research, and produced many important results. He initiated and fostered a number of first class research projectsincluding the solution growth of AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunctions by Jerry Woodall and Hans Rupprecht, which provided the basis for the practical semiconductor laser of today, and the discovery of thin film amorphous magnetic materials, in particular GdCo by P.Chaudhari, J. Cuomo and R.Gambino. These materials became the main media for optical data storage for the optical storage industry. Both the solution growth and the thin film accomplishments resulted in National Medals of Technology for the principals involved.

As Director of Physical Sciences he raised the quality of the department by insisting that his managers aggressively hire the best people. In this effort his shrewd judgment of people and talent served him well. Seymour was a pungent and sometimes barbed critic of work in his department, and his critical reviews played a key role in improving the quality of the work. He did not suffer fools gladly, but rather gladly made fools suffer. On the other hand he could also be sympathetic to others’ problems and often saw talent where others did not. He wasn’t perfect in his judgments of people (but how can anyone be?) and sometimes was disappointed, but was right often enough so that he stood out as a judge of scientific potential and excellence.

Besides directing Physical Sciences at Yorktown, he was the reviewer for the Director of Research of the related departments at the IBM labs in San Jose and Zurich and helped to raise their levels of performance as well. This gift for finding talent was recognized after he left active management and took on the role of senior advisor to the Director of Research. For many years he had veto power on all proposed new PhD hires including those in the Applied Research, Computer Science, and Mathematics Departments, as well as in his own department. Within the Physical Sciences Department candidates had to pass the Keller test - run the Keller gauntlet, and more than a few prospective new hires were not made offers as a result.

Seymour served for many years as Ombudsman for the physical science areas, and many at the Research Center came to him for professional as well as personal advice. He was honest, blunt and objective in this role. Seymour Keller instituted the postdoctoral program that brought many young domestic and foreign scientists to the IBM laboratories. He also recruited actively at Stanford and found time to edit The Handbook of Semiconductors: Materials (1980).

He was an active visitor to the Universities of Bochum and Stuttgart and the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste. Seymour retired in 1993, but remained active at Watson as an Emeritus Staff Member until health problems forced him to move closer to his children in 2007.

Keller’s wife of 63 years, nee Pearl Josephson, of Holyoke MA, survives him, as do four children - Jan (Schulz), David, Richard, and Lisa (Lee), six grandchildren and one great grandchild, to all of whom he was very devoted. Seymour will be remembered by all who worked with him and who knew him as a man of great spirit and elan. He was a superb chef and a gourmet, and of his family and friends enjoyed many of his great meals. He touched the lives of many, including the authors of this testament, who owe him a debt of gratitude for his contributions to the success of their careers, driven by his perceptiveness, critique, and support.