Calvin Forrest Quate (December 7, 1923 – July 6, 2019) was an American electrical engineer and physicist, who was one of the inventors of the

atomic force microscope Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the diffr ...

. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Education

He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah College of Engineering in 1944, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1950.

Career and research

Quate is known for his work on acoustic and atomic force microscopy. The scanning acoustic microscope, invented with a colleague in 1973, has resolution exceeding optical microscopes, revealing structure in opaque or even transparent materials not visible to optics. In 1981, Quate read about a new type of microscope able to examine electrically conductive materials. Together with Gerd Binnig and Christoph Gerber, he developed a related instrument that would work on non-conductive materials, including biological tissue, and the Atomic Force Microscope was born. AFM traces surface contours using a needle to maintain constant pressure against the surface to reveal atomic detail. AFM is the foundation of the $100 million nanotechnology industry. Binnig, Quate and Gerber were rewarded with the Kavli Prize in 2016 for developing the Atomic Force Microscope. Quate was a member of the

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 ...

and

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

. He was awarded the 1980

IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award The initially called Morris Liebmann Memorial Prize provided by the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award was created in 1919 in honor of Colonel Morris N. Liebmann. It was initially given to awardees who h ...

and the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1988 for "the invention and development of the scanning acoustic microscope." Quate became a senior research fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1984. In 2000, he became a recipient of the Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Quate died on July 6, 2019, at the age of 95.

References

External links

Obituary Stanford University

IEEE History Center biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quate, Calvin 1923 births 2019 deaths People from White Pine County, Nevada Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American inventors American electrical engineers Foreign members of the Royal Society IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Fellows of the IEEE National Medal of Science laureates University of Utah alumni Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Microscopical Society Scientists at PARC (company) Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Kavli Prize laureates in Nanoscience American nanotechnologists