The U.S.

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

annually awards the Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Engineering"—the others are the Academy's Russ and Gordon Prizes. The Draper Prize is awarded biennially and the winner of each of these prizes receives $500,000. The Draper prize is named for Charles Stark Draper, the "father of inertial navigation", an MIT professor and founder of Draper Laboratory.

Past winners

* 1989: Jack S. Kilby and Robert N. Noyce for their independent development of the monolithic

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

* 1991: Sir

Frank Whittle Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, (1 June 1907 – 8 August 1996) was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with co-creating the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 fo ...

and Hans von Ohain for their independent development of the turbojet engine * 1993: John Backus for his development of FORTRAN, the first widely used, general purpose, high-level computer language * 1995:

John R. Pierce John Robinson Pierce (March 27, 1910 – April 2, 2002), was an American engineer and author. He did extensive work concerning radio communication, microwave technology, computer music, psychoacoustics, and science fiction. Additionally to ...

and Harold A. Rosen for their development of communication satellite technology * 1997: Vladimir Haensel for his invention of " platforming" * 1999: Charles K. Kao, Robert D. Maurer, and John B. MacChesney for the development of

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

* 2001: Vinton G. Cerf, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, and Lawrence G. Roberts for the development of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

* 2002: Robert Langer for the bioengineering of revolutionary medical drug delivery systems * 2003: Ivan A. Getting and Bradford W. Parkinson for their work developing the

Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide ge ...

* 2004: Alan C. Kay, Butler W. Lampson, Robert W. Taylor, and Charles P. Thacker for their work on

Alto The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian (Latin: '' altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In four-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in ch ...

, the first practical networked computer * 2005: , , , James W. Plummer, and for the design, development, and operation of Corona, the first space-based Earth observation systems * 2006: Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the invention of the

charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...

(CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of

digital camera A digital camera, also called a digicam, is a camera that captures photographs in Digital data storage, digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film or film stock. Dig ...

s and other widely used

imaging technologies Imaging is the representation or reproduction of an object's form; especially a visual representation (i.e., the formation of an image). Imaging technology is the application of materials and methods to create, preserve, or duplicate images. ...

* 2007:

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...

for developing the World Wide Web * 2008: Rudolf E. Kálmán for developing the

Kalman filter In statistics and control theory, Kalman filtering (also known as linear quadratic estimation) is an algorithm that uses a series of measurements observed over time, including statistical noise and other inaccuracies, to produce estimates of unk ...

* 2009: Robert H. Dennard for his invention and contributions to the development of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), used universally in computers and other data processing and communication systems * 2011: Frances H. Arnold and Willem P.C. Stemmer for their individual contributions to directed evolution, a process that allows researchers to guide the creation of certain properties in proteins and cells. This technique has been used in food ingredients, pharmaceuticals,

toxicology Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating ex ...

, agricultural products, gene delivery systems, laundry aids, and

biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from Biomass (energy), biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricu ...

s * 2012: George H. Heilmeier, Wolfgang Helfrich, Martin Schadt, and T. Peter Brody for their contributions to the development of

liquid crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other Electro-optic modulator, electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liq ...

(LCD) technologies * 2013:

Thomas Haug Thomas Haug (26 April 1927 – 9 December 2023) was a Norwegian-Swedish electrical engineer known for developing the Nordic Mobile Telephone, cellular telephone networks. Early life and education Thomas Haug was born in Norway on 26 April 1927. ...

, Martin Cooper, Yoshihisa Okumura (奥村善久), Richard H. Frenkiel, and Joel S. Engel –

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

pioneers who laid the groundwork for cellular telephone networks (GSM) and today's smartphone. * 2014: John Goodenough, (西美緒), Rachid Yazami and

Akira Yoshino is a Japanese chemist. He is a fellow of Asahi Kasei, Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya. He created the first safe, production-viable lithium-ion battery, which became used widely in cellular phones and noteb ...

(吉野彰) – rechargeable battery pioneers who laid the groundwork for today's lithium-ion battery. * 2015: Isamu Akasaki, M. George Craford, Russell Dupuis, Nick Holonyak, Jr. and Shuji Nakamura for the invention, development, and commercialization of materials and processes for light-emitting diodes (LEDs). * 2016: Andrew J. Viterbi for development of the Viterbi algorithm, its transformational impact on digital wireless communications, and its significant applications in

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

and synthesis and in bioinformatics. * 2018: Bjarne Stroustrup for conceptualizing and developing the C++ programming language. * 2020: Jean Fréchet and C. Grant Willson for the invention, development, and commercialization of chemically amplified materials for micro- and nanofabrication, enabling the extreme miniaturization of microelectronic devices. * 2022: Steve B. Furber, John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson and Sophie M. Wilson for contributions to the invention, development, and implementation of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips. * 2024: Stuart Parkin for engineering spintronic technologies, enabling digital information storage that serves as a foundation for today’s data-driven world. The NAE website shows that no Draper Prize was awarded in 2010, 2017, 2019 or 2021.Previous Recipients
/ref> Since the award is a biennial one, it was probably only given in even years beginning in 2016. The Russ Prize, also from the NAE, is awarded in odd years.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Draper Prize Draper Prize winners Awards of the United States National Academy of Engineering International science and technology awards

Past winners

See also

References