CCD co-inventor George E. Smith dies at 95

Summary

Dr. Smith held 30 patents, including the one for the CCD, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The invention of the CCD brought him many awards in addition to the Nobel, including the Stuart Ballantine Medal from the Franklin Institute and the Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering. He also helped found Electron Device Letters, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.Dr. Smith was an avid sailor, a passion he shared with his wife; after he was hired by Bell Laboratories, they bought a 19-foot sailboat, which they used on weekends. Ms. Smith died in 1975, and two years later he began a relationship with Janet Murphy, a teacher who also loved sailing. Ms. Murphy died in 2020.In addition to Ms. Lanning, Dr. Smith is survived by two other children, Leslie Collins and Carson Smith; five grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; and two sisters, Laura Hordeski and Nancy Bell. His brother, Stephen, died in 2015.When Dr. Smith retired, he and Ms. Murphy bought a 31-foot Southern Cross sailboat that they called Apogee and left their home in New Jersey to circumnavigate the world. Apart from a few short visits, they did not return to the United States until 2003.During those 17 years, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice and sailed through the Panama Canal. They explored the Galápagos Islands for a month and then sailed to Tahiti and the Cook Islands. They spent seven years sailing around New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, and then traveled to Indonesia, Thailand, across the Indian Ocean and through the Red and Mediterranean Seas.As Dr. Smith told Soundings, an online sailing publication, in 2009, “I wanted to go sailing long before I got into physics.”