UT Professor Wins Chemistry Prize

A University of Texas chemist has been honored with a $500,000 prize for inventing a key technology used to produce virtually all modern computer chips. The Japan Prize is awarded annually to people who make major contributions to the fields of science and technology. 

C. Grant Willson, along with a colleague and a grad student, figured out how to print complex computer circuits on silicon wafers. Chris Mack, an expert in lithography, says Willson’s work is everywhere.

“Every chip in your cellphone, every chip in your PC, every chip in all your modern electronic gadgets were all made using this material,” Mack said.

Willson developed the photoresist technologies in the late 1970s while working at IBM.