death_date death_place birth_place nationality article_title birth_date known_for image employer education birth_name
2 july 1993 pittsburgh , pennsylvania , u.s. indianapolis , indiana , u.s. american clarence zener
 1 december 1905 zener diode , geometric programming clarence zener.jpg university of chicago westinghouse carnegie mellon university stanford university harvard university clarence melvin zener
clarence zener

clarence melvin zener -lrb- december 1 , 1905 -- july 2 , 1993 -rrb- was the american physicist who first described the property concerning the breakdown of electrical insulators .
these findings were later exploited by bell labs in the development of the zener diode , which was duly named after him .
zener was a theoretical physicist with a background in mathematics who conducted research in a wide range of subjects including : superconductivity , metallurgy , ferromagnetism , elasticity , fracture mechanics , diffusion and , geometric programming .
zener was born in indianapolis , indiana and earned his phd in physics under edwin kemble at harvard in 1929 .
his thesis was entitled `` quantum mechanics of the formation of certain types of diatomic molecules '' .
in 1957 he received the bingham medal for his work in rheology and in 1959 received the john price wetherill medal from the franklin institute .
a notable doctoral student of zener 's was john b. goodenough and arthur s. nowick held a postdoctoral appointment under zener .
zener was known both for his dislike of experimental work and for preferring to work on practical problems within the arena of applied physics , in which he was very insightful .
although he had a reputation of being very successful in these endeavors , he apparently considered himself as being less qualified to work on purely theoretical physics problems .
in recognition of this , he once commented that after dining with physicist j. robert oppenheimer : `` when it came to fundamental physics , it was clear there was no point in competing with a person like that . ''
