Thomas E. Everhart

Dr. Everhart is one of the pioneers in the fabrication of electronic devices using electron beam lithography, and has received numerous honors, awards and other recognition for his work. He received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, the ASEE Benjamin Garver Lamme Award in 1989, and the Centennial Medallion in 1993, was elected a foreign member of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1990, and received the IEEE Founders Medal and Okawa Prize, both in 2002. He also has been a member of various national and international societies including the Council of the National Academy of Engineering, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (where he was chairman) and the Council on Competitiveness (where he was vice chairman and continues to serve on the executive committee). He has also conducted continuing dialogues with federal agencies concerning their support of research and teaching on campus, and with NASA in support of JPL. In addition, he sat on the boards of several large corporations including General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, and Raytheon Company. Building on his early work in the field of scanning electron microscopy, Dr. Everhart’s research provided much of the basis for forming microstructures using scanning electron beams to form desired patterns on substrates. Everhart-Thornley detectors are still used in scanning electron microscopes even though the first one was used in 1956. In 1978, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions in this area, which also led to his election as a member of the Böhmische Physikalische Gesellschaft. Dr. Everhart also is a Fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Dr. Everhard also served as Caltech’s president and as a professor of electrical engineering and applied physics for 10 years until 1997, overseeing construction of the Beckman Institute, Keck Observatory in Hawaii, Braun Athletic facility, Moore Laboratory of Engineering, Avery House, and the Fairchild Library. He also led the successful completion of the $350 million Campaign for Caltech, and in November 1998 He came to Caltech from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was Chancellor and professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1984 to 1987. Prior to that, he was dean of the College of Engineering and professor of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University. Before joining Cornell, he spent 20 years on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, after earning his PhD in 1958.