Lester Eastman and the Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Technology [Speaker’s Corner]

The late Prof. Lester (Les) F. Eastman of Cornell University retired in 2011 but remained in Ithaca, NY, USA, until he passed away a decade ago. His career accomplishments were well known. For example, in six decades of his academic career, he graduated 125 Ph.D. students. There are good articles about him on Wikipedia and Memorial Tributes of the National Academy of Engineering, although they miss some key points. For example, they cite his APS Fellow Award in 2001 but fail to mention his IEEE Fellow Award in 1969 around the age of 40 shortly after being awarded tenure. Before that, when he was an assistant professor, he started a conference series on high-speed semiconductor devices and circuits and presented himself as a leader in the field. (It was renamed as the Lester Eastman Conference decades later.) Few people would have the guts to pull such a stunt so early in their careers.