William G. Pfann

William Gardner Pfann (27 October 1917 to 22 October 1982) was an inventor and materials scientist with Bell Labs, born in Brooklyn, New York City. He joined the Chemical Research Department of Bell Labs in 1935 at the age of eighteen and earned a bachelor degree in chemical engineering through night school at Cooper Union in 1940. He is known for his development of zone melting, which is essential to the semiconductor industry, publishing the article Principles of Zone-Melting in 1952 and a text titled Zone Melting in 1958. He also devised one of the first point-contact transistors and a method of bonding fine gold wires to germanium. In 1973 he was the first recipient of the Gordon E. Moore Medal and in 1975 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.