Willard Boyle — Canadian Physicist born on August 19, 1924, died on May 07, 2011

Willard Sterling Boyle, CC was a Canadian-American physicist, pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. On October 6, 2009, it was announced that he would share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography"... (wikipedia)

It is a great honor to be awarded a Nobel Prize. This is a wonderful experience for my wife Betty and me. We received congratulations by email, phone and post, many from old friends we had not seen for some time.
We lived in Northern Quebec, and the nearest school was thirty miles away, so my mother took on the task of home schooling me. She spoke to some friends, received some instructions from the provincial school board, and found some interesting books that perhaps I might find useful.
I found that my career at Bell Telephone Labs thrived because of the environment, which encouraged cooperative research, offered opportunities for access to sophisticated equipment, and fellowship.
Lester Germer was my first supervisor at Bell Labs. He was the Germer of the Davisson and Germer Experiment that is sometimes referred to in introductory texts on physics.