National Inventors Hall of Fame Class of 2018

In the early 1980s, biochemist Marvin Caruthers and his team at the University of Colorado Boulder developed the methods for chemically synthesizing DNA, a breakthrough that dramatically advanced biological research and helped launch the biotechnology industry. Caruthers’ work transformed protein and DNA synthesis from highly specialized basic research into a widely used research, diagnostic, and forensic tool.

Marvin Caruthers' Bio

A pioneer in the field of sports television graphics, Stan Honey has impacted the viewing experience of millions of sports fans. Innovations developed by Honey and his team at Sportvision, now owned by SMT, include the Virtual Yellow 1st & Ten® line, introduced on September 27, 1998, during an ESPN-televised game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. Now ubiquitous in football, the superimposed yellow line has been hailed as one of the most important developments in sports broadcast technology since the debut of instant replay in 1963.

Stan Honey Bio

In the late 1990s, Sumita Mitra, a chemist at 3M Oral Care, the dental products division of 3M Company, invented the first dental filling material to include nanoparticles. The new composite filling material, called Filtek™ Supreme Universal Restorative, is a versatile material that could be used for restoring teeth in any area of the mouth; mimicked the beauty of natural teeth; had better polish retention; and exhibited superior strength than existing dental composites.

Sumita Mitra's Bio

Arogyaswami Paulraj pioneered MIMO—Multiple Input, Multiple Output—a wireless technology that has revolutionized broadband wireless internet access for billions of people worldwide. MIMO improves both transmission data rates and expands network coverage. It is the essential foundation for all current (WiFi and 4G mobile) and future broadband wireless communications.

Arogyaswami Paulraj's Bio

An environmentally safe clean-up technology called emulsified zero-valent iron, or EZVI, was co-invented by NASA environmental engineer Jacqueline Quinn and a team of researchers from the University of Central Florida in the late 1990s. Quinn and her team developed EZVI to combat chlorinated solvent contaminants left over from space exploration’s early years, when NASA used chlorinated solvents as degreasers for rocket engine parts. The solvents, classified as Dense Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids (DNAPLs), are sources of environmental contamination at thousands of government and private industry facilities. Heavier than water, DNAPLs sink into the ground and can pollute fresh water sources if left untreated.

Jacqueline Quinn's Bio

RSA Cryptography is the world’s most widely used public-key cryptography method for securing communication on the Internet. Instrumental to the growth of e-commerce, RSA is used in almost all Internet-based transactions to safeguard sensitive data such as credit card numbers.

A native of Schenectady, NY, Rivest earned his B.A. in mathematics at Yale University and his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University. He remains on the faculty of MIT. Named on over 25 U.S. patents, Rivest has received numerous awards, including the 2007 Marconi Prize and, with Shamir and Adleman, the 2002 ACM Turing Award.

Ronald Rivest's Bio

RSA Cryptography is the world’s most widely used public-key cryptography method for securing communication on the Internet. Instrumental to the growth of e-commerce, RSA is used in almost all Internet-based transactions to safeguard sensitive data such as credit card numbers.

A native of Tel Aviv, Shamir earned his B.Sc. in mathematics from Tel Aviv University and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in computer science from Israel’s Weizmann Institute, where he is now on the faculty. Shamir continues his work in cryptography and has received multiple honors, including the 2002 ACM Turing Award shared with Rivest and Adleman.

Adi Shamir's Bio

RSA Cryptography is the world’s most widely used public-key cryptography method for securing communication on the Internet. Instrumental to the growth of e-commerce, RSA is used in almost all Internet-based transactions to safeguard sensitive data such as credit card numbers.

Adleman, a native of San Francisco, earned his B.A. in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he went on to earn his Ph.D. in computer science. A distinguished professor at the University of Southern California, Adleman is also known for his work in number theory and as the father of the field of DNA computation. He has received numerous awards, including the 2002 ACM Turing Award with Rivest and Shamir.

Leonard Adleman's Bio

Chemists Ching Wan Tang and Steven Van Slyke pioneered the organic light emitting diode, or OLED, an advance in flat-panel displays found in computers, cell phones, and televisions that provides increased power efficiency, longer battery life, and improved display quality.

Born in Hong Kong, Tang received his higher education in Canada and the United States and joined Eastman Kodak in 1975. After hiring Van Slyke, they applied the organic heterojunction, a bilayer structure of an electron donor and an electron acceptor invented by Tang, to various applications including OLEDs. OLEDs can be used wherever LCDs are used.

Ching Wan Tang's Bio

Chemists Ching Wan Tang and Steven Van Slyke pioneered the organic light emitting diode, or OLED, an advance in flat-panel displays found in computers, cell phones, and televisions that provides increased power efficiency, longer battery life, and improved display quality.

Van Slyke launched his 30-year career at Eastman Kodak in 1979, when he and Tang began developing OLED technology. They are thinner, lighter, provide superior brightness and color, and offer ultra-fast response time for functions such as refreshing and on-off switching. Unlike LCDs that rely on a backlight that passes through color filters to produce light, OLED screens utilize luminescent organic materials to make their own light.



Steven Van Slyke's Bio