Andre August Jaecklin (born June 27, 1933) is a Swiss electrical engineer and was a university teacher. He made contributions in different fields of electronics starting with telecommunications, followed by data storage while in California and notably semiconductor devices for power applications. In particular, he is a pioneer of optically fired

thyristor A thyristor () is a solid-state semiconductor device with four layers of alternating P- and N-type materials used for high-power applications. It acts exclusively as a bistable switch (or a latch), conducting when the gate receives a current t ...

s in the field of

power electronics Power electronics is the application of electronics to the control and conversion of electric power. The first high-power electronic devices were made using mercury-arc valves. In modern systems, the conversion is performed with semiconducto ...

Life

Andre A. Jaecklin graduated in electrical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

) in 1958. Subsequently, he spent two years at its Institute of Telecommunications, headed by Heinrich Emil Weber, earning his doctorate degree based on a thesis entitled ''Transistorisierter Impulsgenerator für die Zeittaktzählung von Telefontaxen.'' His first employment in industry was at G. Hasler Ltd. in Berne, Switzerland. In 1963, he emigrated to the US and worked for

Ampex Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...

Corporation in

Redwood City Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay e ...

in the field of magnetic-tape data storage devices. When he returned to Switzerland in 1968, he joined the newly founded Corporate Research Center of

Brown, Boveri & Cie Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In ...

in Baden AG. His first assignment was the development of a photoelectric

current sensor In electrical engineering, current sensing is any one of several techniques used to measure electric current. The measurement of current ranges from picoamps to tens of thousands of amperes. The selection of a current sensing method depends on ...

for high-voltage transmission lines using the

Faraday effect The Faraday effect or Faraday rotation, sometimes referred to as the magneto-optic Faraday effect (MOFE), is a physical magneto-optical phenomenon. The Faraday effect causes a polarization rotation which is proportional to the projection of the ...

together with

Peter J. Wild Peter J. Wild (born 1939) is a Swiss people, Swiss electronics engineer and a pioneer of liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology. Biography Peter Josef Wild was born and educated in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He studied electrical engineering at ...

. In 1970, he started and led a new research group ''Semiconductor Devices''. The efforts were directed towards applications in AC/DC converters for high-voltage DC

power transmission Power transmission is the movement of energy from its place of generation to a location where it is applied to perform useful work. Power is defined formally as units of energy per unit time. In SI units: :\text = \frac = \frac Since the deve ...

. Within the company, he changed from the Research Center to the Electronics Division in 1973. There, he contributed to the development of corresponding products. His activity concentrated on the conception and realization of new bipolar devices such as very high power

s and

Gate turn-off thyristor A gate turn-off thyristor (GTO) is a special type of thyristor, which is a high-power (.e.g. 1200V AC) semiconductor device. It was invented by General Electric. GTOs, as opposed to normal thyristors, are fully controllable switches which can b ...

s (GTOs) to be used in DC transmission lines and electrical locomotives. From 1981 onwards, he lectured power electronics at the ETH Zurich. In April 1993, this university made him

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the gener ...

at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering.

Honors

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

since 1995''Directory Fellows of the IEEE. Andre Jaecklin''
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D-ITET, ETH Zurich, 29 May 2018

Publications

* A. A. Jaecklin, M. Lietz: ''Birefringence and Faraday Effect.'' J. of Appl. Math. and Phys. 20 (4), 1969, p. 565 * André A. Jaecklin (Editor): ''Power Semiconductor Devices and Circuits.'' Springer, New York. 26 October 2012, . * André A. Jaecklin
''Publications by Andre A. Jaecklin.''
Researchgate. Retrieved 28 May 2019 * Wolfgang Fichtner and André A. Jaecklin
''ISPSD Proceedings International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices & ICs.''
IEEE, 1 December 1994, 436 pp. * André A. Jaecklin (Keynote Paper)
''Integration of Power Components – State of the Art and Trends.'' 7th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications. Trondheim, Norway.
EPE Association, Brussels, September 1997.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jaecklin, Andre 20th-century Swiss engineers Academic staff of ETH Zurich Fellow Members of the IEEE 1933 births Living people