Honoring the Inductees We Lost in 2024

For more than 50 years, the National Inventors Hall of Fame^® has shared the stories of visionary creators and innovators with the next generation. To date, we have inducted 639 patented inventors and honored their diverse accomplishments through National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum exhibits, innovative competitions and nationwide invention education programs.

As 2024 comes to a close, join us in remembering the Hall of Fame Inductees we lost this year. We honor the lives and legacies of these visionaries, who will continue to influence and inspire future problem solvers and world changers.

George Alcorn

Inductee George Alcorn was a pioneering physicist and engineer noted for his aerospace and semiconductor inventions. His X-ray imaging spectrometer, patented during his career at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, allowed for the detection of radio signatures at a more distant and accurate rate than previously possible and influenced the continued evolution of imaging devices.

While working at NASA, Alcorn also became an educator. He taught physics and engineering at Howard University and took on roles at the University of the District of Columbia, where he worked to encourage and support science and engineering doctoral candidates from underrepresented groups. To reach younger students, Alcorn also became a founder of Saturday Academy – a weekend math and science honors program for Washington, D.C.’s inner-city middle schools. His honors included the Robert H. Goddard Award of Merit and the Alumni Seal Award for Professional Achievement from Occidental College.

Donald L. Bitzer

Inductee Don Bitzer and his fellow Inductees Gene Slottow and Robert Willson co-invented the first plasma display, making possible the flat-screen TVs we use today. When he was a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Bitzer needed an advanced display for his invention of PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations), a networked and interactive teaching system. So, he worked with Slottow and Willson to create a plasma panel that would overcome the limitations of existing displays.

Bitzer was a Distinguished University Research Professor at North Carolina State University. He and his co-inventors received an Emmy Award for their work in advancing television technology.

Lynn Conway

Inductee Lynn Conway and fellow Inductee Carver Mead invented VLSI, or Very Large-Scale Integration, which transformed the global microelectronics industry. This technology triggered what is now known as the Mead-Conway Revolution by allowing small teams of individuals to design powerful chips.

At the University of Michigan, Conway served as professor of electrical engineering and computer science. She was active in supporting transgender rights and seeking recognition for women’s technological achievements, and her many honors included the Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers, the Franklin Institute’s John Price Wetherill Medal, the James Clerk Maxwell Medal of the IEEE and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the IBM Corp. Lifetime Achievement Award.

John Daugman

Inductee John Daugman invented iris recognition – biometric algorithms for identifying persons reliably and rapidly using the random texture visible in an eye’s iris. Encoded iris pattern phase sequences provide a great deal of information, enabling recognition with confidence levels high enough to search national-sized databases without identity collisions, and at speeds of millions per second per CPU core. Daugman's algorithms are used worldwide.

Daugman was a professor of computer vision and pattern recognition at Cambridge University. He also held chairs at universities in Europe and Japan. His honors included the Information Technology Award of the British Computer Society, and the OBE, Order of the British Empire.

Robert H. Dennard

Inductee Robert Heath Dennard invented one-transistor Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), which significantly increased computer memory density while reducing costs. Considered one of the most important advances in computer technology, DRAM became the industry standard, enabled the microcomputer revolution and is commonly used in all forms of computers.

A pioneer in scaling theory, which provides rules for making circuits smaller in every dimension, Dennard was named an IBM Fellow. He held more than 100 U.S. patents, and his many awards included the National Medal of Technology, the Harvey Prize, the IEEE Medal of Honor, the Draper Prize and the Kyoto Prize.

Akira Endo

Inductee Akira Endo discovered mevastatin and led research into a new class of molecules known as statins, now a hugely successful class of drugs targeting the lowering of cholesterol. At Sankyo Co. in Tokyo, Endo tested thousands of microbes before ultimately discovering mevastatin, which lowered LDL cholesterol dramatically in patients.

Endo served as director of biopharmaceutical research laboratories at Tohoku University in Japan and was a distinguished professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. His honors included the Japan Prize and the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Lubomyr Romankiw

Inductee Lubomyr Romankiw and fellow Inductee David Thompson invented magnetic thin film storage heads, creating new designs for both read and write heads along with a new fabrication process. The thin film head dramatically increased storage density while greatly decreasing both disk size and the cost of magnetic storage.

Romankiw was named an IBM Fellow for his contribution to magnetic data storage technology, and received numerous national awards and honors including the prestigious Perkin Medal.

Learn More About Our Inductees

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