Clarence Melvin Zener

Clarence Melvin Zener (Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, December 1, 1905 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 15, 1993) was an American physicist who discovered the effect that bears his name in semiconductor diodes. With extensive knowledge of mathematics, he wrote on a wide variety of subjects, including Superconductivity and Metallurgy and Anelasticity, among others. After receiving his doctorate in physics from Harvard University in 1930, he taught at various universities around the country and worked briefly at Westinghouse.

Biographical synthesis

He studied physics at Stanford University, graduating in 1926. In 1929 he received a doctorate (Ph.D.) from Harvard University and further studies at the University of Leipzig.

In 1934 he published an article on the breakdown of the insulating properties of certain materials.

In the early 1950s, after the invention of the transistor and following his research on semiconductor materials, William B. Shockley and several colleagues at Bell Laboratories studied the phenomenon of reverse current in p–n junctions, explaining it according to the theory that Zener had developed in his 1934 work on tunneling. The practical application of this research materializes in a semiconductor diode that Shockley baptizes as a Zener diode.

In 1935 he began his teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis, continuing in 1937 at the City College of New York and in 1940 at Washington State University.

During World War II, he carried out research work at the Watertown Arsenal (Massachusetts).

After finishing this, he went on to work as a professor at the University of Chicago until 1951. During this period he carried out pioneering studies on anelasticity in metals and published the first book on this scientific subject. It is due to this pioneering contribution, who received the ICIFUAS award in 1985, which would later become the "Zener Gold Medal" in his honor. He then went to work at Westinghouse Electric Corp. Research Laboratories and fourteen years later, after retiring from this company, he spent three years at Texas A&M University and in 1968 he moved to Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of physics until his final term. withdrawal.

In this university he conducts research and obtained several patents on a system for obtaining electricity based on changes in seawater temperature.

Another of the research fields in which he stood out was the internal friction of metals and he also contributed to the development of geometric programming (geometric programming) for the study of mathematical and engineering problems and published more than 100 articles and various books.

Died on July 15, 1993.

Discovery made

• Diodo Zener
• Zener Award, Zener Gold Medal

Awards and recognitions

Zener was elected a member of the National Academy of Science in 1959, and among the awards and medals he received include:

• Bingham Award (Society of Rheology), 1957.
• Wetherill Medal (The Franklin Institute), 1959.
• Von Hippel Award (Materials Research Society), 1982.
• ICIFUAS Prize, 1985.
• Albert Sauveur Achievement Award (American Society for Metals).
• Gold Medal (American Society for Metals).

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