- Electrical and Computer Engineering
Robert W. Bower was an emeritus professor in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Within his field, he was famous for having developed a self-aligned gate MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as a SAGFET. Bower patented this design in 1969, during his tenure at California’s Hughes Research Laboratory. Bower invented and refined the basic transistor structure used in the vast majority of computer and memory chips: the world’s most replicated artificial structure.
Dr. Bower taught for one year at UCLA in the late 1970s before UC Davis became Bower’s academic home in 1987. In 1999, Bower was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions granted to an engineer.