physics

Willard Boyle

Willard Boyle is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Willard Boyle rather than just read about it. In short: Willard Sterling Boyle (August 19, 1924 – May 7, 2011) was a Canadian applied physicist who shared one half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics with George E. Smith for their invention of the charge-coupled device.

Key takeaways

Willard Boyle belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Willard Boyle to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Willard Boyle from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Willard Sterling Boyle (August 19, 1924 – May 7, 2011) was a Canadian applied physicist who shared one half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics with George E. Smith for their invention of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm, Boyle helped select lunar landing sites and provided support for the Apollo space program.

Early life and education Willard Sterling Boyle was born on August 19, 1924, in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and moved to Quebec with his parents when he was about 2-years-old. He was homeschooled by his mother until the age of 14, when he began his formal education at Lower Canada College in Montreal. Boyle attended McGill University, but his education was interrupted in 1943 when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. He was loaned to the Royal Canadian Naval Air Service, where he learned how to land Spitfires on aircraft carriers as the war ended. After resuming his studies at McGill, Boyle gained a B.Sc. in 1947, and an M.Sc. the following year. In 1950, he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on mass spectrometry.

Career After receiving his doctorate, Boyle spent one year at Canada's Radiation Lab and two years teaching physics at the Royal Military College of Canada. In 1953, Boyle joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he invented the first continuously operating ruby laser with Don Nelson in 1962, and was named on the first patent for a semiconductor injection laser. He was made director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at the Bell Labs subsidiary Bellcomm in 1962, providing support for the Apollo space program and helping to select lunar landing sites. He returned to Bell Labs in 1964, working on the development of integrated circuits. Boyle was Executive Director of Research at Bell Labs from 1975 until his retirement in 1979.

Charge-coupled device In 1969, Boyle and George E. Smith invented the charge-coupled device (CCD), for which they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009. The CCD allowed NASA to send clear pictures to Earth back from space. It is also the technology that powers many digital cameras today. Smith said of their invention: "After making the first couple of imaging devices, we knew for certain that chemistry photography was dead." Eugene Gordon and Mike Tompsett, two now-retired colleagues from Bell Labs, claim that its application to photography was not invented by Boyle.

Personal life and death In retirement, Boyle split his time between Halifax and Wallace, Nova Scotia. In Wallace, he helped launch an art gallery with his wife, Betty, a landscape artist. He was married to Betty since 1946 and had four children, 10 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. In his later years, Boyle suffered from kidney disease. Due to complications from this disease, he died on May 7, 2011, at a hospital in Truro, Nova Scotia, at the age of 86.

Recognition

Awards

Memberships

Chivalric titles

Notes

References

External links Willard Boyle on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture on December 8, 2009 CCD – an Extension of Man's Vision

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Willard Boyle

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Willard Boyle claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Willard Boyle before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Willard Boyle ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Willard Boyle

In research: Willard Boyle appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Willard Boyle in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Willard Boyle is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1924 births, 2011 deaths, Academic staff of the Royal Military College of Canada, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Willard Boyle outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Willard Boyle in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Willard Boyle means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Willard Boyle out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Willard Boyle in simple terms?

Why does Willard Boyle matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Willard Boyle?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Willard Boyle.