The
National Academy of Engineering awards annually the 'Charles Stark Draper Prize', which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Engineering" - the others being the Academy's
Russ and
Gordon Prizes. The winner of each of these prizes receives $500,000. The Draper prize is named for
Charles Stark Draper, the "father of
inertial navigation", an
MIT professor and founder of the
Draper Laboratory.
Past Winners of the Charles Stark Draper Prize
★
1989:
Jack S. Kilby and
Robert N. Noyce for their independent development of the monolithic
integrated circuit.
[1]
★
1991: Sir
Frank Whittle and
Hans von Ohain for their independent development of the
turbojet engine.
★
1993:
John Backus for his development of
FORTRAN, the first widely used, general purpose, high-level computer language.
★
1995:
John R. Pierce and
Harold A. Rosen for their development of communication satellite technology.
★
1997:
Vladimir Haensel for his invention of "
platforming".
★
1999:
Charles K. Kao,
Robert D. Maurer, and
John B. MacChesney for the development of
fiber optics.
★
2001:
Vinton G. Cerf,
Robert E. Kahn,
Leonard Kleinrock, and
Lawrence G. Roberts for the development of the
Internet.
★
2002:
Robert Langer for the bioengineering of revolutionary medical
drug delivery systems.
★
2003:
Ivan A. Getting and
Bradford W. Parkinson for their work developing the
Global Positioning System.
★
2004:
Alan C. Kay,
Butler W. Lampson,
Robert W. Taylor, and
Charles P. Thacker for their work on
Alto, the first practical networked computer.
★
2005:
Minoru S. "Sam" Araki,
Francis J. Madden,
Edward A. Miller,
James W. Plummer and
Don H. Schoessler for the design, development, and operation of
Corona, the first space-based Earth observation system.
★
2006:
Willard S. Boyle and
George E. Smith for the invention of the
Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of
digital cameras and other widely used
imaging technologies.
★
2007:
Tim Berners-Lee for developing the World Wide Web.
References
1. Recipients of the Charles Stark Draper Prize