The Eighth Tribe, 1976 (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1976-12-01 / 12. szám
Page 4 THE EIGHTH TRIBE December, 1976 Dr. I. S. Tuba: ACADEMIC NEWS Introducing Dr. Zoltán P. Szepesi, An Outstanding Hungarian Physicist Zoltán P. Szepesi was born in Hungary in 1912. He studied mathematics-physics-pedagogy at the University of Budapest and Szeged, Hungary. He received a high school teacher’s diploma in 1935 and a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1937. Dr. Szepesi worked at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of The University of Szeged, then at the “Tungsram” Research Laboratory, and following that was as the Experimental Station of the Hungarian Telephone and Telegraph Institute and at the Pulvari Laboratory in Budapest. He left Hungary in 1947 and spent four years at the High Frequency Laboratory of the University of Grenoble in France as Research Associate (Attache ’de Recherches) and worked eight years at the Canadian Marconi Company in Montreal, Canada as Senior Research Physicist. Since 1958 Dr. Szepesi has been with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, first at the Electronic Tube Division in Elmira, New York as Fellow Engineer, and from 1972 at the Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh as Fellow Scientist. In his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Szepesi measured the distribution of tbe Compton-scattering of X-rays and proved the validity of the quantummechanical Klein-Nishina formula. His experiments on the shot-noise of electron tubes proved the theoretical considerations of Schottky and Thompson. His work on a high gain microwave slot-antenna system was presented at the French Academy. A small portable radio transceiver developed by Dr. Szepesi and Professor Benoit, was used in the life-saving expeditions into the mountains around Grenoble and also in the French Hiinalyan expedition about 15 years ago. Dr. Szepesi’s experiments with photoconductive materials resulted in the first man production of CdS photocells by the Canadian Marconi Company. These photocells were used for the first time for individual automatic street light switching and were tried out with excellent results on the Hudson Highway beyond 137th Street in New York City. Also Marconi used these cells for automatic brightness control of their TV sets in 1954. The National Semiconductor Limited in Montreal, who took over the production of these photocells from Marconi, still Dr. Zoltán Szepesi, Fellow Scientist at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories and inventor of many major developments in solid state radiographic converter screens, holds the storage model of a converter screen that shows the x-ray image of the lady’s purse. By photographing the image on the nonstorage model of the screen, x-ray dose can be reduced by a factor of 6 over conventional radiological film. exploits commercially the results of this development. The principal interest of Dr. Szepesi during the last 16 years has been in the field of solid-state displays. He developed a solid-state image amplifier for the Naval Training Device Center which intensified the brightness of an image 10 to 100 times. Later, when NASA considered the need for radiographic nondestructive testing in space experiments where neither the standard photographic radiography with liquid developers, nor the cumbersome heavy Xeroxediography could be used, an X-ray sensitive solidstate image converter seemed to be the ideal solution. Dr. Szepesi was given the task of developing such a device, which he did successfully. He received several award certificates from NASA in recognition of his “Noteworthy Contributions to the Technology Utilization Program.” Two kinds of radiographic converter screens were developed: one is a storage type; the other is
