Calvin Quate

Calvin Forrest Quate (December 7, 1923 – July 6, 2019) was an American electrical engineer and physicist, who was one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.

Calvin Quate
Born	Calvin Forrest Quate (1923-12-07)December 7, 1923 Baker, Nevada, U.S.
Died	July 6, 2019(2019-07-06) (aged 95) Menlo Park, California, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Utah (B.S.) (1944) Stanford University (Ph.D.) (1950)
Known for	Atomic force microscopy Acoustic microscopy
Awards	IEEE Medal of Honor (1988) National Medal of Science (1992) Kavli Prize (2016)
Scientific career
Fields	Electrical engineering
Institutions	PARC Sandia National Labs
Thesis	Traveling wave tubes as low noise amplifiers  (1950)

Education

He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah College of Engineering in 1944, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1950.^[1]

Career and research

Quate is known for his work on acoustic and atomic force microscopy. The scanning acoustic microscope, invented with a colleague in 1973, has resolution exceeding optical microscopes, revealing structure in opaque or even transparent materials not visible to optics.

In 1981, Quate read about a new type of microscope able to examine electrically conductive materials. Together with Gerd Binnig and Christoph Gerber, he developed a related instrument that would work on non-conductive materials, including biological tissue, and the Atomic Force Microscope was born.^[2] AFM traces surface contours using a needle to maintain constant pressure against the surface to reveal atomic detail.^[3] AFM is the foundation of the $100 million nanotechnology industry. Binnig, Quate and Gerber were rewarded with the Kavli Prize in 2016 for developing the Atomic Force Microscope.

Quate was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the 1980 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award and the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1988 for "the invention and development of the scanning acoustic microscope."^[4] Quate became a senior research fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1984.^[4] In 2000, he became a recipient of the Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.^[5] Quate died on July 6, 2019, at the age of 95.^[6][7]