Mohamed M. Atalla

Mohamed M. Atalla (1924 to 2009) was an Egyptian-American engineer, physicist, cryptographer, inventor and entrepreneur, a semiconductor pioneer best known for inventing, with Dawon Kahng, the MOSFET at Bell Labs in 1959. Born in Port Said, he studied at Cairo University and took his master's degree and doctorate in mechanical engineering at Purdue University before joining Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1949, where his work on surface passivation of silicon preceded the MOSFET. He then founded the semiconductor laboratory of Hewlett-Packard in 1962 and the microwave and optoelectronics division of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1969. Turning to data security, he founded Atalla Corporation in 1972 and in 1973 released the Atalla Box, the first hardware security module, which encrypted PIN and ATM messages. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and received the Stuart Ballantine Medal.