George Heilmeier: LCD inventor did so much more

Industry leader

After leaving government service, Heilmeier applied his catechisms to a variety of industries, from Texas Instruments (TI) where he served as chief technology officer  in the 1980s, to Bellcore (now Telcordia) where he served as president and chief executive officer in the 1990s.

Today Heilmeier is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Defense Science Board and the National Security Agency Advisory Board. He also serves on the boards of Fidelity Investments, Teletech Holdings and the Board of Overseers of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of the University of Pennsylvania.

A Philadelphia native, Heilmeier earned his EE from the University of Pennsylvania and his doctorate in solid-state electronics from Princeton University. He holds 15 patents and innumerable awards including the Kyoto Prize, IEEE David Sarnoff Award, two Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service medals, and in 2012 the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which he shared with Wolfgang Helfrich, Martin Schadt and T. Peter Brody who developed his seminal LCD discoveries into the modern active-matrix twisted nematic configuration used today.

* Heilmeier’s original LCD used a method he called dynamic scattering, which Helfrich and Schadt improved with the twisted nematic field effect which drastically cut LCD power consumption. Brody later invented the active matrix drive circuitry which enabled the faster response times needed to use LCDs for motion video on television.