Virgil Bruce Elings Recognized for Development of Scanning Probe Microscopy
Cleveland, Ohio – June 8, 2004 -- The American Physical Society (APS) named Virgil Bruce Elings of NanoDevices as the 2004 winner of the Joseph F. Keithley Award. The award was given for Elings's development of scanning probe microscopy through numerous inventions and improvements that led to its commercialization and for providing a role model of the physicist entrepreneur.The Keithley Award, established in 1997, presents $5000 annually to a physicist who has been instrumental in the development of measurement techniques or equipment that have an impact on the physics community by providing better measurements. The award honors the late Joseph F.
Keithley, Founder of Keithley Instruments, Inc., for his contributions in the area of sensitive and precision instrument development and measurement techniques.Elings studied mechanical engineering at Iowa State and earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He taught Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for more than 20 years, most of the time in a Masters Degree program in Scientific Instrumentation, which he started in 1971. In 1987, Elings founded Digital Instruments, Inc., a leader in scanning probe microscope development and manufacturing, and served as its President and Chairman until his retirement in 1999. He holds 42 patents in Scanning Tunneling and Atomic Force Microscopes.
About Keithley Instruments, Inc. With more than 50 years of measurement expertise, Keithley Instruments ( www.keithley.com ) has become a world leader in advanced electrical test instruments and systems from DC to RF (radio frequency) geared to the specialized needs of electronics manufacturers for high performance production testing, process monitoring, product development, and research. By building upon our strength in electrical measurement solutions for research, Keithley has become a production test technology leader for the semiconductor, wireless, optoelectronics, and other precision electronics segments of the worldwide electronics industry.
The value we provide to our customers is a combination of precision measurement technology and a rich understanding of their applications to improve the quality, throughput, and yield of their products.
