IEEE Awards Booklet - 2011 - 14

I E E E

M E D A L S

2011 IEEE
Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal
Sponsored by the Federation of Electric Power Companies, Japan,
and the Semiconductor Research Foundation

Bernard J. Lechner, T. Peter Brody and Fang-Chen Luo

For pioneering contributions to thin-film-transistor (TFT) liquid-crystal displays

thin-film transistors (TFTs). In 1974, Drs. Brody and Luo
presented a 6´6-in. display consisting of 120'120 pixels.
Although modest by today's standards, given the technology available to them at the time it was a great
achievement. In 1982, Brody formed Panelvision and
invited Luo to join him. Panelvision offered the first commercial TFT LCDs.

The early work of Bernard J. Lechner, T. Peter Brody and
Fang-Chen Luo on liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology
for television pictures set the stage for the proliferation of
today's flat-screen televisions and monitors. The trio
overcame the initial limitations of using liquid crystals to
display complex moving images to make the dream of
being able to hang a television on the wall a reality.
During the 1960s while at RCA, Lechner was the first to
analyze the limitations of early liquid crystal cells. He recognized that simple matrix addressing would not work
well for television applications, so Lechner pursued active
matrix addressing schemes and conceived the basic idea
of associating a field-effect transistor (FET) and a capacitor
with each cell of a LCD panel to selectively store and
control the brightness of the cell. However, RCA
abandoned its pursuit of LCD television, and it was Drs.
Brody and Luo at Westinghouse who extended Lechner's
work and produced the first LCDs employing an array of

An IEEE Life Fellow, Mr. Lechner is currently a consultant
residing in Princeton, N.J.
Dr. Brody is currently the chief technology officer of
Advantech US Inc., Pittsburgh, Pa.
An IEEE Life Member, Dr. Luo is currently chief intellectual
property officer and vice president at AU Optronics
Corp., Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Scope: For outstanding contributions to material and device science and technology, including practical application.

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