Willard Boyle
Canadian physicist
Who was Willard Boyle?
Willard Sterling Boyle (August 19, 1924 – May 7, 2011) was a Canadian applied physicist who shared one half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics with George E. Smith for their invention of the charge-coupled device. Willard Sterling Boyle was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and moved to Quebec with his parents when he was about 2-years-old. He was homeschooled by his mother until the age of 14, when he began his formal education at Lower Canada College in Montreal. Boyle attended McGill University, but his education was interrupted in 1943 when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm, Boyle helped select lunar landing sites and provided support for the Apollo space program.
He was loaned to the Royal Canadian Naval Air Service, where he learned how to land Spitfires on aircraft carriers as the war ended.
Historical significance
After resuming his studies at McGill, Boyle gained a B.Sc. In 1950, he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on mass spectrometry.