Charles Stark Draper Prize
Encyclopedia
The National Academy of Engineering
annually awards the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Engineering" - the others being the Academy's Russ
and Gordon Prize
s. The winner of each of these prizes receives $500,000. The Draper prize is named for Charles Stark Draper
, the "father of inertial navigation", an MIT professor and founder of Draper Laboratory
.
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
annually awards the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Engineering" - the others being the Academy's Russ
Russ Prize
The Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize is an American national and international award established by the United States National Academy of Engineering in October 1999 in Athens, Ohio...
and Gordon Prize
Gordon Prize
The Bernard M. Gordon Prize was started in 2001 by the United States National Academy of Engineering. Its purpose is to recognize leaders in academia for the development of new educational approaches to engineering...
s. The winner of each of these prizes receives $500,000. The Draper prize is named for Charles Stark Draper
Charles Stark Draper
Charles Stark Draper was an American scientist and engineer, often referred to as "the father of inertial navigation." He was the founder and director of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, later renamed the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, which under his direction designed and built the Apollo...
, the "father of inertial navigation", an MIT professor and founder of Draper Laboratory
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Draper Laboratory is an American not-for-profit research and development organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper focuses on the design, development, and deployment of advanced technology solutions to problems in national security, space exploration, health care and energy.Originally...
.
Past winners
- 1989: Jack S. KilbyJack KilbyJack St. Clair Kilby was an American physicist who took part in the invention of the integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000. He is credited with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip...
and Robert N. NoyceRobert NoyceRobert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968...
for their independent development of the monolithic integrated circuitIntegrated circuitAn integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
. - 1991: Sir Frank WhittleFrank WhittleAir Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS was a British Royal Air Force engineer officer. He is credited with independently inventing the turbojet engine Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air...
and Hans von OhainHans von OhainHans Joachim Pabst von Ohain was a German engineer, one of the inventors of jet propulsion.Frank Whittle, who patented in 1930 in the United Kingdom, and Hans von Ohain, who patented in 1936 in Germany, developed the concept independently during the late 1930s...
for their independent development of the turbojet engineJet engineA jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet to generate thrust by jet propulsion and in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets...
. - 1993: John BackusJohn BackusJohn Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language and was the inventor of the Backus-Naur form , the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax.He also did research in...
for his development of FORTRANFortranFortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
, the first widely used, general purpose, high-level computer language. - 1995: John R. Pierce and Harold A. Rosen for their development of communication satellite technology.
- 1997: Vladimir HaenselVladimir HaenselVladimir Haensel was an American chemical engineer who invented the platforming process - a platinum catalytic process for reforming petroleum hydrocarbons into gasoline...
for his invention of "platforming". - 1999: Charles K. KaoCharles K. KaoThe Honorable Sir Charles Kuen Kao, GBM, KBE, FRS, FREng is a pioneer in the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications...
, Robert D. MaurerRobert D. MaurerDr. Robert D. Maurer is an American industrial physicist noted for his leadership in the invention of optical fiber.-Early life:...
, and John B. MacChesneyJohn B. MacChesneyDr. John B. MacChesney is a Bell Labs pioneer in optical communication, best known for his 1974 invention of the modified chemical vapor deposition process with colleague P.B. O'Connor, and for co-inventing high-purity "sol-gel" overcladding for optical fiber in the early 1980s...
for the development of fiber optics. - 2001: Vinton G. Cerf, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard KleinrockLeonard KleinrockLeonard Kleinrock is an American engineer and computer scientist. A computer science professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, he made several important contributions to the field of computer networking, in particular to the theoretical side of computer networking...
, and Lawrence G. Roberts for the development of the InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. - 2002: Robert Langer for the bioengineering of revolutionary medical drug deliveryDrug deliveryDrug delivery is the method or process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans or animals. Drug delivery technologies modify drug release profile, absorption, distribution and elimination for the benefit of improving product efficacy and safety, as well...
systems. - 2003: Ivan A. GettingIvan A. GettingIvan Alexander Getting was an American physicist and electrical engineer, credited with the development of the Global Positioning System...
and Bradford W. ParkinsonBradford ParkinsonBradford Parkinson is an American engineer and inventor, and United States Air Force colonel best known as the father of the Global Positioning System....
for their work developing the Global Positioning SystemGlobal Positioning SystemThe Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...
. - 2004: Alan C. KayAlan KayAlan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."He is the president of the Viewpoints Research...
, Butler W. Lampson, Robert W. TaylorRobert Taylor (computer scientist)Robert William Taylor , known as Bob Taylor, is an Internet pioneer, who led teams that made major contributions to the personal computer, and other related technologies....
, and Charles P. ThackerCharles P. ThackerCharles P. Thacker is an American pioneer computer designer.-Biography:Thacker was born in Pasadena, California on February 26, 1943.He received his B.S...
for their work on Alto, the first practical networked computer. - 2005: Minoru S. "Sam" Araki, Francis J. Madden, Edward A. Miller, James W. PlummerJames W. PlummerJames W. Plummer is a retired engineer who served as the fifth Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Mr. Plummer was the first Director NRO to come from private industry. He previously served as the Lockheed Corporation program manager for the CORONA and LANYARD imaging systems. Mr....
and Don H. Schoessler for the design, development, and operation of CoronaCorona (satellite)The Corona program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force...
, the first space-based Earth observation systems. - 2006: Willard S. BoyleWillard BoyleWillard Sterling Boyle, was a Canadian physicist and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. On October 6, 2009, it was announced that he would share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor".-Life:Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, he...
and George E. SmithGeorge E. SmithGeorge Elwood Smith is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor".Smith was born in White Plains, New York...
for the invention of the Charge-Coupled DeviceCharge-coupled deviceA charge-coupled device is a device for the movement of electrical charge, usually from within the device to an area where the charge can be manipulated, for example conversion into a digital value. This is achieved by "shifting" the signals between stages within the device one at a time...
(CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of digital cameraDigital cameraA digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
s and other widely used imaging technologiesImaging technologyImaging technology is the application of materials and methods to create, preserve or duplicate images. This can mean several things:*Computer graphics*Microfilm and Micrographics*Visual arts**Etching**Drawing and Technical drawing**Cinema**Painting...
. - 2007: Tim Berners-LeeTim Berners-LeeSir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
for developing the World Wide Web. - 2008: Rudolf E. KalmanRudolf KalmanRudolf Emil Kálmán is a Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematical system theorist, and college professor, who was educated in the United States, and has done most of his work there. He is currently a retired professor from three different institutes of technology and universities...
for developing the Kalman filterKalman filterIn statistics, the Kalman filter is a mathematical method named after Rudolf E. Kálmán. Its purpose is to use measurements observed over time, containing noise and other inaccuracies, and produce values that tend to be closer to the true values of the measurements and their associated calculated...
. - 2009: Robert H. Dennard for his invention and contributions to the development of Dynamic Random Access MemoryDynamic random access memoryDynamic random-access memory is a type of random-access memory that stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated circuit. The capacitor can be either charged or discharged; these two states are taken to represent the two values of a bit, conventionally called 0 and 1...
(DRAM), used universally in computers and other data processing and communication systems. - 2011: Frances H. Arnold and Willem P.C. StemmerWillem P.C. StemmerWillem P.C. Stemmer has repeatedly invented technologies that have led to successful companies and products. Before, he founded Avidia after inventing its Avimer technology. In 1997, he founded Maxygen to commercialize the DNA shuffling technology, now called Molecular Breeding, which led to the...
for their individual contributions to directed evolutionDirected evolutionthumb|250px|right|An example of a possible round to evolve a protein based fluorescent sensor for a specific analyte using two consecutive FACS sortings...
, a process which allows researchers to guide the creation of certain properties in proteins and cells. This technique has been used in food ingredients, pharmaceuticals, toxicology, agricultural products, gene delivery systems, laundry aids, and biofuels.