Simon Sze

Simon Min Sze was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and grew up in Taiwan. After graduating from the National Taiwan University in 1957, he received a master's degree from the University of Washington in 1960 and a doctorate from Stanford University in 1963.

Sze worked for Bell Labs until 1990, after which he returned to Taiwan and joined the faculty of National Chiao Tung University.^[1] He is well known for his work in semiconductor physics and technology, including his 1967 invention (with Dawon Kahng) of the floating-gate transistor,^[2] now widely used in non-volatile semiconductor memory devices. He wrote and edited many books, including Physics of Semiconductor Devices, one of the most-cited texts in its field.

Simon Sze died on 6 November 2023, at the age of 87.^[3]

• 1977: IEEE Fellow^[4]
• 1991: J. J. Ebers Award^[5]
• 1994: Academician of Academia Sinica, Taiwan^[6]
• 1995: Member of National Academy of Engineering, United States^[7]
• 1998: Foreign Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, China
• 2010: Tenured Chair Professor, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
• 2014: Honorary Chair Professor, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
• 2017: IEEE Celebrated Member
• 2021: The Future Science Prize, China^[8]

• Physics of Semiconductor Devices, S. M. Sze. New York: Wiley, 1969, ISBN 0-471-84290-7; 2nd ed., 1981, ISBN 0-471-05661-8; 3rd ed., with Kwok K. Ng, 2006, ISBN 0-471-14323-5.
• Nonvolatile Memories: Materials, Devices and Applications 2-volume set, Tseung-Yuen Tseng and Simon M. Sze. Los Angeles: American Scientific Publishers, 2012; ISBN 1-58883-250-3.
• Semiconductor Devices: Physics and Technology, S. M. Sze. New York: Wiley, 1985; 2nd ed., 2001, ISBN 0-471-33372-7; 3rd ed., 2012, ISBN 978-0470-53794-7.
• VLSI Technology, ed. S. M. Sze. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983, ISBN 0-07-062686-3; 2nd ed., 1988, ISBN 0-07-062735-5.
• Modern Semiconductor Device Physics, ed. S. M. Sze. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998, ISBN 0-471-15237-4.