This year's class include the late Maurice Hilleman, who was born in a little town in Montana. Of the 14 vaccines that are routinely proscribed for children, he developed eight of them. Then there's the Hungarian Peter Goldmark, who invented the long playing record in 1948 so the world could switch from 78's to 33 1/3 RPM's.
One inductee's invention helped kick off the entire bio-tech industry. Dr. Leroy Hood, another small-town Montana guy, helped invent the process to sequence DNA and therefore lead to the entire Human Genome Project. Hood said he was working to map out the elements of proteins and DNA at Caltech when he realized the method had much broader applications.
Leroy Hood: In the late 70s I went to president of Caltech and said, 'Look, we should commercialize these things' and he said no. He thought the role of an academic institution was scholarship and education and commercialization and if I wanted to do that I'd have to do it myself. So I went to 19 different instrument companies and got a no from all of them before Bill Boze, a venture capitalist in San Francisco called me and offered $2 million to start a company which later became Applied Bio-Systems which later is today the leader in molecular instrumentation in the world.
It's hard to imagine these days that universities would not want to be part of that applied science.
Leroy Hood: It's inconceivable. You go back to Caltech now and they're unbelievably aggressive in trying to convert intellectual property into licenses or companies or whatever you can do with it.
So Caltech ended up doing okay?
Leroy Hood: Oh, the automated DNA sequencer I think was the most successful patent Caltech ever had and they've made close to $100 million on that patent alone.
Caltech's president refused to allow Hood to own stock in their spin-off company Applied Bio-systems, still trying to maintain a separation between academia and industry. But Leroy Hood went on to start his own company, the country's largest bio-tech company, Amgen. He's now running a non-profit organization in Seattle looking to explore biology from a systematic approach that he believes will have an even bigger impact than the DNA sequencer.
Are there certain times when you have a sort of "Ah hA" moment?
Leroy Hood: You know, I run and exercise in the morning and I always do it by myself. Great Ah Ha moments come when I'm running down the trail and just thinking about something. The great thing about running for 45 minutes is you can focus on one thing and look at all the angles. So some of my best ideas come when I run.
I've talked to inductees over the years and so many of them have stories about coming up with those moments. It's always away from work.
Leroy Hood: The other time I really do come up with great ideas is: I'll often go to bed trying to solve a problem and then I'll wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and there it'll be.
One of this year's inductees had an Ah-ha moment while sitting in a Pittsburgh diner. Paul Lauterbur is a native of Sidney Ohio who got his bachelors in chemistry at Case Institute of Engineering - now Case Western Reserve. He and Englishman Peter Mansfield are being indicted for their work on MRI - Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The two have already received Nobel Prizes for their work. The Inventors Hall has already inducted one man, Ray Damadian for his work on the MRI and Damadian's first model is on display now on the Hall's main floor. An Inventor's Hall spokesman says they're not getting into the controversy over who invented what first but chose inductees on the merit of their individual patents.
The induction ceremony will be held May 4th and fifth in Akron.
National Inventors Hall of Fame 2007 Inductees
Living
Paul Baran (1926-) Digital Packet Switching
Paul Baran worked at the RAND Corporation developing a communication network that could survive a first strike from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In creating this decentralized network, Baran built a system capable of dividing information into message blocks, or "packets," that would be sent along various paths across a network and rejoined into a whole at their destination.
Baran was born in Grodno, Poland and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of two. In 1949, he earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from Drexel University and his M.S. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1959.
Emmett Chappelle (1925-) Bioluminescence techniques
Emmett Chappelle discovered that a specific combination of chemicals caused certain living organisms to emit light. Chappelle's discovery, known as bioluminescence, facilitated important findings within the fields of biology and chemistry.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Chappelle studied at the University of Washington, where he earned an M.A. in biology. In 1963, while working for NASA, Chappelle began exploring the qualities of light given off by different life forms. In charge of developing instruments used to scrape soil from Mars on NASA's Viking probe, Chappelle realized how chemicals gave off a measurable light when mixed with materials containing living cells. He applied this to detect bacteria in urine, blood, spinal fluids, drinking water, and foods.
John Franz (1929-) Roundup Weed killer
In 1970, research chemist John Franz discovered the glyphosate class of herbicides while searching for a systemic product that would be effective against perennial and annual weeds. Marketed under the brand name Roundup, glyphosate eliminates more than 125 kinds of weeds and is nontoxic to animals. Glyphosate is among the most widely used herbicides in the world.
Franz was born in Springfield, Illinois. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota. He commenced work at Monsanto Company in 1955 and retired in 1991. Franz was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1987.
Leroy Hood (1938-) DNA Sequencing
With his development of the DNA gene sequencer and other automated biotechnical instruments, Leroy Hood played a crucial role in launching the biotech industry. His gene sequencer greatly accelerated progress on the Human Genome Project during the 1990s. By enabling scientists to map the 25,000 genes that make up a human being, Hood profoundly changed how scientists think about biology.
Born in Missoula, Montana, Hood earned his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and his Ph.D. from Caltech. He is the recipient of many awards including the Lasker Award, the Kyoto Prize and the Lemelson-MIT Prize.
Paul Lauterbur (1929-) MRI
Paul Lauterbur made the widespread application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology possible by devising a practical way to make images. Lauterbur created a magnetic field gradient that allowed subtle variations in NMR signals to be used to map the positions of molecules. Using these images, he established magnetic resonance imaging in modern medicine as a tool for non-invasive diagnosis and analysis.
Born in Sidney Ohio, Lauterbur earned his B.A. in chemistry from the Case Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Lauterbur and Mansfield were awarded Nobel Prize in 2003.
Peter Mansfield (1933-) MRI
Peter Mansfield invented echo-planar imaging (EPI), the first fast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique. EPI provides precise images of the brain and other internal organs, replacing invasive methods of examination and reducing the risk and discomfort for many patients. More than 60 million cases are evaluated with MRI each year.
Born in England, Mansfield earned his Ph.D. from the University of London's Queen Mary College in 1962. He was knighted in 1993 and shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Lauterbur for their contributions to magnetic resonance imaging in 2003.
Robert Metcalfe (1946-) Ethernet
Robert Metcalfe invented, standardized, and commercialized Ethernet. Developed as a way to link the computers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center to one another, Ethernet uses digital packets and distributed controls to transmit data over what would become the most widely used local area network, or LAN. Today, over a quarter billion new Ethernet switch ports are shipped annually worldwide.
Metcalfe was born in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and industrial management before completing his Master and Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1973.
Metcalfe was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2005.
Deceased
Allen Breed (1927-1999) Automotive Air Bag
Allen Breed pioneered one of the most significant advances in automotive safety by inventing the first modern air bag sensor and safety system in 1968. After numerous improvements to his design, the air bag became standard equipment on passenger cars.
Breed was born in Chicago, Illinois and earned his B.S. in engineering from Northwestern University. Starting the Breed Corporation in 1961 to develop automotive safety sensor technology, he constructed reliable crash sensors that prompted the quick deployment of an air cushion without harming the passenger.
David Cushman (1939-2000), Miguel Ondetti (1930-2004) Captopril
David Cushman and Miguel Ondetti synthesized captopril, an oral drug that significantly reduces hypertension in more than eighty percent of users and has no side effects on the central or autonomic nervous systems. Captopril was the first in a life-saving class of drugs known as angiotensin converting enzyme, or ACE, inhibitors.
Cushman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. After earning is Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, he joined Bristol-Myers Squibb, studying ACE inhibitors.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ondetti earned his Ph.D. from the University of Buenos Aires in 1957. During his 34-year career at Bristol-Myers Squibb, he earned more than 100 patents and was awarded the Perkin Medal in 1991.
Donald Davies (1924-2000) Digital Packet Switching
In 1965, Donald Davies designed and implemented the first operational packet switching network. Packet switching, a term coined by Davies, was based on the concept of sending information in small digital "packets" through a distributed system, with each packet able to take a different path from sender to receiver, rather than over a conventional dedicated circuit.
Born in Treorchy, Wales, Davies studied at the Imperial College in London, earning his B.S. in physics and mathematics.
William Goddard (1913-1997), John Lynott (1921-1994) Magnetic Disk Drive
William Goddard and John Lynott invented magnetic disk storage at IBM's Almaden Research Center in the 1950s. Able to store five million characters of information and retrieve any record in less than one second, Goddard and Lynott's magnetic disk drive represented a leap forward in mass-storage technology and the end of sequential storage and batch processing with punched cards and paper tape.
Goddard was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. After earning his degree from Occidental College, he spent time working for North American Aviation, Inc. before establishing his career at the IBM Corporation.
Born in Johnson City, New York, Lynott attended Syracuse University. He earned 25 patents for his work in mass-data storage during his 27-year career at IBM.
Peter Goldmark (1906-1977) Long Playing Record
Peter Goldmark invented the long-playing (LP) record that dominated the recorded music industry for forty years. As an engineer for CBS Laboratories, he also invented a system for transmitting and receiving color television and made numerous other innovations in electronics.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Goldmark studied at the Universities of Berlin and Vienna before immigrating to the U.S. in 1933. After working as a consultant to various electronics companies, he joined CBS Labs. In 1948, Goldmark invented the LP by slowing the record from 78 revolutions per minute (rpm) to 33 1/3 rpm, increasing the length of the groove and decreasing its width. Goldmark was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1977.
Maurice Hilleman (1919-2005) Vaccines
Maurice Hilleman pioneered the discovery and development of more than three dozen vaccines - more than any other scientist - saving millions of lives around the world. During his career at Merck, he developed eight of the fourteen vaccines routinely recommended for children. His vaccines have virtually eliminated many of the once-common childhood diseases in developed countries.
Hilleman was born in Miles City, Montana, earning his B.S. from Montana State University in 1941 and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1944. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1988.
Godfrey Hounsfield (1919-2004)
In the late 1960s, Godfrey Hounsfield began developing computer-assisted tomography, or CAT scanning, an improved form of diagnostic imaging. At Thorn EMI Ltd., he combined his understanding of electronics and radar to create three-dimensional images that illuminated the internal physiology of the human head.
Born in Newark, England, Hounsfield earned degrees from City and Guilds College of London and Faraday House Electrical Engineering College. He worked for England's Royal Air Force during World War II, where he served as an instructor in radar mechanics. Hounsfield was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize.
Arthur Nobile (1920-2004) Prednisone
Arthur Nobile's patent for the invention, medical use, and production of the steroids prednisone and prednisolone was one of the most significant advances in medicine during the mid-twentieth century. These highly effective anti-inflammatory drugs have saved many lives, alleviated much suffering, and have become indispensable in treating autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, Addison's disease, and lupus.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, Nobile studied at the University of Southern California before earning his A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley. The discovery of the prednisone and prednisolone heralded a new area of chemical synthesis, creating a multi-billion dollar industry based on the use of microbes to manufacture drugs.
Otto Wichterle (1913-1998) Soft Contact Lens
Otto Wichterle invented the soft contact lens and the process to manufacture it. In addition to being more comfortable than traditional glass or hard plastic lenses, Wichterle's lenses were less expensive, required a shorter adjustment period, and could be worn for longer periods of time.
Born in Prostejov, Moravia (now the Czech Republic), Wichterle earned his Ph.D. from the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT). He worked as a professor at ICT in the 1950s creating a material suitable for eye implants known as hydroxy ethyl methacrylate, or HEMA, a polymer gel that absorbed water and was transparent.
Forced to leave ICT in a political purge, Wichterle continued his work on hydrogels at home with his wife, a doctor. In 1961, using his homemade device, he developed a spin-casting process that used centrifugal force to forge HEMA into soft, pliable lenses.