Craford and Edelheit to be inducted to Engineering at Illinois Hall of Fame

This Thursday, two distinguished Physics Illinois alumni—Dr. M. George Craford (MS 1963, PhD 1967) and Dr. Lewis S. “Lonnie” Edelheit (BS Engineering Physics 1964, MS 1966, PhD 1969)—will be inducted into the 2014 Engineering at Illinois Hall of Fame. They are among six total Engineering alumni to be selected for this distinction this year for their significant achievements in leadership, entrepreneurship, and innovation of great impact to society.

The induction ceremony will take place on Thursday, October 16, 2014, at 4 p.m. in the Grainger Auditorium at the newly opened Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (306 Wright Street, Urbana. The induction ceremony is open to friends, family, and supporters, and Physics students and faculty are encouraged to attend.

M. George Craford

George Craford is being recognized for his invention of the first yellow light emitting diode (LED) and for his pioneering efforts in the development and commercialization of LED materials. He is the key person behind the development of technologies for the highest-brightness yellow, amber, and red LEDs as well as world-class blue LEDs. 

Raised in a farming community in Iowa, Craford earned both a master of science degree (1963) and a PhD (1967) in physics from Illinois while working with Nick Holonyak, Jr., the inventor of the first visible direct band gap LED, an invention that enabled the evolution of the high performance LED technology now in use worldwide.

Craford began his professional career in 1967 at the Monsanto Chemical Company, where he quickly became the leader of the LED technology group for what was at that time the largest LED company in the world. He led the development of an improved new GaAsP:N LED technology in 1971 that yielded the first yellow LED and increased the performance of red LED’s by an order of magnitude. It became the dominant high performance LED technology for more than a decade.

Craford became Director of Technology for the Monsanto Electronics Division in 1974. In 1979, when Monsanto sold their LED and compound semiconductor business, Craford was hired on at Hewlett Packard, where he served as Technology Manager for the Optoelectronic Division, with the responsibility of maintaining leadership in LED technology. In 1990, Craford’s team pioneered the development of another new LED technology that utilized the quaternary compound AlInGaP and yielded the world’s highest performance red, orange, and amber LEDs. The first LED with performance of 100 lumens per watt was demonstrated. Devices of this type continue to be used in traffic lights, automobiles, among many other applications.

In 1999, Craford became Chief Technology Officer of Lumileds Lighting, a joint venture between Agilent and Philips. The first high power white LEDs, with inputs of one watt and higher, were developed at Lumileds Lighting and are now widely used in many types of lighting, including general illumination, automobile taillights, and cellphone flashes. Lumileds Lighting, which later became Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, today maintains its position at the forefront of LED technology.

Craford is currently Solid State Lighting Fellow at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the IEEE. He has been awarded the 2002 National Medal of Technology, the University of Illinois Alumni Distinguished Service Award, the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Optical Society of America Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors Welker Award, the Materials Research Society MRS medal, the Electrochemical Society Electronic Division Award, the Economist Innovation Award, the Strategies in Light LED Pioneer Award, and the International SSL Alliance Global Solid State Lighting Development Award.

Lewis S. “Lonnie” Edelheit

Lewis S. “Lonnie” Edelheit is a Global business and technology visionary who oversaw world-leading engineering breakthroughs at General Electric in areas as diverse as medical imaging, jet propulsion and advanced lighting, and whose research contributed to the advancement of computer tomography X-ray systems.

For 27 years, Edelheit helped establish GE as an innovation leader that produced some of world’s most technologically advanced products. The most notable GE advances under Edelheit’s leadership were the digital X-ray mammography, the digital Cardiac Angiography Systems, advanced ultrasound medical imagers, high-efficiency turbines for power generation, the GE 90 Jet engine, advanced lighting and electronics-based appliances, and weatherable plastics.

Other highlights of Edelheit’s tenure at GE include significant advances in the introduction of advanced technology for GE’s services businesses, Internet applications and corporate R&D leadership of the design for six sigma quality, and e-engineering initiatives throughout the GE businesses. Also under his leadership, corporate R&D vastly expanded its global resources with the development of new technology centers in Bangalore, India, and Shanghai, China.

Edelheit spent all but five years of his career, from 1969 until his retirement in 2001, at GE, serving not only as the company’s Senior Vice President of Research and Development, but also as a member of its Corporate Executive Council.

He began his professional career in 1969 as a physicist at the GE R&D Center, where he made significant contributions to computed tomography (CT) x-ray systems. He helped to pioneer major advances in computed tomography, both through his own technical work and through his leadership of engineers and scientists from a wide range of technical disciplines.

In 1976, Edelheit transferred to GE Medical Systems in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he helped to move GE's radically new form of computed tomography x-ray scanner quickly to the marketplace. He formed and managed a new Applied Science and Diagnostic Imaging Laboratory and later rose to such positions as General Manager of Engineering for all GE Medical Systems products and General Manager of the Computed Tomography Programs Department, where he held marketing and profit-and-loss responsibility for GE's worldwide computed tomography scanning business.

In 1986, Edelheit left GE to become president and CEO of Quantum Medical Systems, a venture capital-backed company that pioneered color flow ultrasound for vascular imaging; he continued in that position after Quantum was acquired by the Siemens Corporation.  He returned to GE in 1991 as manager of the R&D Center's Electronic Systems Research Center. In 1992, he assumed leadership of GE’s Corporate R&D.

Edelheit is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, which selected him for the 2001 George E. Pake prize. In 1995, he received the University of Illinois College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, from 1995 until 2002. He was also a member of the advisory board of NIST’s Advanced Technology Program. Edelheit is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Energy and Environment Directorate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He also serves on the boards of major education and service organizations on both coasts, including the Harvard Medical School, both the physics and bioengineering departments at the University of Washington, and the Virginia Mason Health System Board in Seattle.