Willard Sterling Boyle
1924–2011, Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada, Wallace, Nova Scotia, Canada
Canadian physicist, co-inventor of the CCD (charge-coupled device) image sensor at Bell Labs.
Boyle joined Bell Labs in 1953 and built the first continuously operating ruby laser. In 1969 he and George E. Smith proposed a device that shuttled charge packets along a semiconductor surface — conceived as 'bubble memory' but quickly turned to imaging. CCDs then dominated digital photography, video cameras and telescopes for decades.
Nobel-winning work
In 1969 Boyle and George Smith invented the CCD — a semiconductor device that records images by accumulating and shifting charge across millions of pixels. It became the 'electronic eye' of digital cameras, space telescopes (Hubble) and scanners, revolutionizing all of image capture.
Workplaces: Bell Laboratories
Canada, United States