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ROBERT NEWNHAM, PH.D.
Alcoa Professor Emeritus Solid State Science
Penn State
University Park, Pa.

The 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering
The next time you see an ultrasound image of a fetus, think of Robert Newnham, who invented the composite piezoelectric transducer that has revolutionized numerous fields of engineering, including medical ultrasound.  In addition to its significance as a diagnostic tool, millions of expectant parents have been given the indescribable experience of meeting their babies months before delivery and checking in on their well being. 

Piezoelectricity is an electric phenomenon that occurs in certain non-metallic minerals such as quartz.  In addition to its importance in the biomedical field, piezoelectric transducers play an important role in underwater acoustics and in wireless communications.  Modern automobiles use about 100 transducers; spaceships use them too.  In fact, by incorporating piezoelectric transducers into the Hubble telescope, scientists were able to repair the telescope when it was necessary.  They then could refocus it to send back the breathtaking images of outer space in the news today.

"A transducer changes one form of energy to another," Newnham explains, "so the type that I work on, piezoelectric transducers, change electrical energy into mechanical energy, or mechanical energy into electrical energy.  That is how we make the little vibrations that we use in ultrasound. 

"Have you ever had an ultrasound test?  That was me looking inside you!" he quips.  "I made the little transducers that are on the head, or the probe.  I was in on the ground floor, but most of the credit for developing today's ultrasound techniques belongs to others.  They took my basic geometry and design and combined these with all the electronic systems and computer systems that can analyze things.  This is all very sophisticated now," he adds.

The story of Newnham's fascination with science begins when he was just a boy, wandering about the hills of New York State, where he lived, picking up quartz crystals.  He started collecting them then and has never stopped.  This fascination with crystals led him to Hartwick College, where he earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics, and then to Colorado A & M, where he earned a master's degree in physics. 

"I came to Penn State in 1952 because it was the best program in the country for crystals.  I was interested in learning about their structure and properties.  I wanted to extend the understanding that I already had of quartz crystals and their behavior." 

At Penn State, Newnham studied clay, specifically china clays, which are very tiny crystals of clay.  It turns out that china clays are associated with coal deposits.  Newnham's thesis was based on one of these clays from an anthracite deposit in Schuylkill Mines, here in Pennsylvania.

"These are some of the best clays in the world, the kind that you make porcelain from. I used these to determine the atomic structure of clay," he says.  "I actually located all of the atoms in the crystal structure of clay!"

After earning his Ph.D. in physics from Penn State, Newnham earned a second Ph.D. in crystallography at Cambridge University in 1960, and then accepted a teaching position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He returned to Penn State in 1966.  He has taught countless courses on crystal chemistry, crystal physics, and electro-ceramics in the materials science and engineering departments at Penn  State since 1966.  Here he earned one of the highest honors of his career, the distinction of Outstanding Teacher at The Pennsylvania State University. 

Honored also as an outstanding lecturer and educator, Newnham has received the John Jeppson Medal and Award from the American Ceramic Society and the International Ceramics Prize from the Academy of Ceramics.  He is a fellow of both the American Ceramic Society and Mineralogical Society of America, and a member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and the National Academy of Engineering, among others.  In addition to being one of the pioneers in the field of electronic composites, Newnham is acknowledged as the father of unified nomenclature of piezocomposites.  He is a prolific author, teacher, and mentor and an outstanding innovator with more than 20 U.S. patents granted to his name. 

Newnham officially retired in early 1998 but is still happily engaged in a number of research projects, one of which is in collaboration with Penn State's bioengineering department.  This research also employs the use of transducers for medical applications, but not for the usual inspection of the body.  Instead, these transducers are used in association with transdermal delivery of medication.

"You put medicine on a patch, then launch sound waves behind the patch to push the medication through the skin," says Newnham.  This technology was initially centered only on pigs, rabbits and rats, he says, but then one of the professors in the College of Agriculture heard about the research and has started using this technology to help his cows.  No research has been done yet with transdermal delivery of medication on humans because the protocol calls for the techniques to be qualified first with animals.

A number of other research endeavors are with the U.S. Navy, which has had an Applied Research Lab at Penn State since the 1940s.  "This is one of the biggest labs in the Navy, and one of the things they are doing now that is very exciting is building automated underwater vehicles (AUVs).  While these AUVs are shaped somewhat like torpedoes, and are about the size of torpedoes, they have no explosives in them.  These vehicles are intended to explore the ocean for mines or other obstructions that could cause military problems, from terrorists for example.  There is going to be a very big commercial market in this field."  According to Newnham, these vehicles all use sonar systems and some of them use the types of transducers he has worked on.

In addition to the scientific advances that have been associated with his research, Newnham is pleased about the economic gains that have resulted as well.  The payoff for Pennsylvania, he says, is that there are several companies now in Bellefonte, Lewistown, State College, and other nearby towns that specialize in making ultrasonic probes.  "It is one part of the economy that is doing pretty well.

"I am proud of the fact that some of my students are out there, and others are picking up on these ideas and extending them far beyond what I could have done," he says.  "This is a nice legacy for me to leave."