Tracy Hall

Howard Tracy Hall (1919 to 2008), who often used the name H. Tracy Hall or Tracy Hall, was an American physical chemist and one of the early pioneers in research on synthetic diamonds, using a press of his own design. Born in Ogden, Utah, he took his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Utah in 1948 and joined the General Electric Research Laboratory, where on December 16, 1954, he produced synthetic diamond in a press with a belt-shaped die and two tapered pistons, an achievement that led to a major supermaterials industry. He left General Electric in 1955 to teach chemistry at Brigham Young University, where he invented the tetrahedral and cubic press systems, and in the early 1960s he invented the first form of polycrystalline diamond. He co-founded MegaDiamond in 1966 and was granted 19 patents.