printable versionMemorial Resolution: William Edward Spicer
William Edward Spicer
( 1929 - 2004 )
Physicist William Edward Spicer, a pioneer in the field of photoelectron spectroscopy, a teacher, a mentor and an inventor, died of heart failure on June 6 2004 while vacationing in London, England, with his wife.
William E. Spicer was born in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, on 7 September 1929. He overcame a poor boyhood school system, learning and speech difficulties to obtain a bachelor's degree in physics from the College of William and Mary in 1949. At this college he was elected Phi Beta Kappa at the age of 19. Spicer earned a second bachelor's degree in physics from Massachusett Institute of Technology in 1951. He then attended the University of Missouri-Columbia where he received his master and doctoral degrees in physics in 1953 and 1955, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis work was supervised by Professor Eugene B. Hensley and dealt with luminescence from sodium chloride.
From 1955 to 1962 Spicer worked at RCA Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, where he developed a fundamental understanding of photocathodes. In this work he gained a deep insight of the photoemission process and laid the foundation to a research field, photoelectron spectroscopy that would develop to an extremely powerful research tool for a large number of disciplines.
Spicer joined the Stanford faculty in 1962 to help build a solid state physics program in the Department of Electrical Engineering. It was in the mid-60's that he pioneered the use of photoemission to study the band structure of solids and contributed in a most significant way to the rapid growth of a field that had major impacts on the development of semiconductors and catalysts. Spicer introduced the so-called three-step model to interpret the energy distributions of photoemitted electrons from a solid and in doing so was able to interpret the experimental results and connect the measured photoemission spectra to the electronic band structure. According to the Spicer model the photoemission process occurs in three independent steps: photoexcitation, transport to the surface, and escape of the electron into vacuum. Spicer deep insight turned out to be a pathbreaking approach and opened up a new field that over the years has become the main line of research for hundreds of scientists worldwide. During his more than 40 years on the Stanford faculty Spicer was instrumental in the continued development of the photoemission techniques and its application to a broad range of problems in condensed matter physics. During his long career at Stanford Spicer published more than 700 articles in refereed journals and supervised more than 100 doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. He is among the most cited scientists. He paid great attention to recruiting women and other minorities into his research group. Spicer was an early advocate for interdisciplinary research and in addition to his faculty appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering he was on the faculty in the Department of Applied Physics and in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. In 1978 he became the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering.
After the initial work on photocathodes at RCA in the late 50's and early 60's Spicer kept a lifelong interest in the further development of photocathode devices and their applications in industry. As a consultant to Varian Associate during his time at Stanford Spicer invented an improved x-ray intensifier tube that found applications in medical devices worldwide. Furthermore Spicer made important contributions to technology advances of night-vision tubes now in use by the US military. Spicer became emeritus in 1992 but remained active in research up to his death. And the research on new materials for photocathodes was one of the fields he pursued after retirement, both through federal grants and in consultation with industry.
In addition to the pioneering work to get insight into the electronic properties of materials with the photoemission techniques Spicer together with professor S.Doniach - also at Stanford, was the driving force in the implementation of a new radiation source, namely synchrotron radiation. With characteristic foresight Spicer realized in the late 60's that a new accelerator (the SPEAR storage ring) under construction at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center could be used for research in solid-state physics. This was the birth of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project, now Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory that is now used by about 2000 national/international scientists yearly and with an outstanding track record for pioneering research in many disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and medicine. In the early days Spicer served as its Deputy Director, Acting Director and Consulting Director.
During his long career Spicer was a frequent advisor on numerous committees and panels serving both the government and the industry. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Spicer received numerous awards for his research and service to the scientific community. In 1980 he won the Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize from the American Physical Society and in 1981 he was chosen as the scientist of the year by the Research & Development Magazine. In 1984, the American Vacuum Society gave him its senior and most prestigious prize, the Medard W. Welch Award. And in 2000 he received one of his most treasured awards: the Lifetime Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Spicer had many interests outside his pursuit of research, teaching and invention. He was an avid reader of books in a variety of fields. He had a deep love for history in general and over the years he amassed a remarkable stamp collection, always searching the latest catalogues for new additions of rarities. He was also an accomplished bridge player and, before his heart troubles, tennis player.
Colleagues at Stanford and worldwide in the research community sorely miss Spicer for his truly pioneering work and high professional standards. His many doctoral students remember him as a caring and understanding mentor who was supportive not only of their professional career but also personally. For those who had the privilege of working closely with Spicer for many years it is easy to understand why so many of his students developed deep and lifelong bonds with him. In addition to his wife, Diane, Spicer is survived by his daughters Sally Spicer of Mountain View and Jakki Spicer of Minneapolis, as well as two grandchildren. Spicer's son, William Spicer, Jr., died in 2000.
Committee: Jim Harris Ingolf Lindau, Chair Piero Pianetta Zhi-Xun Shen