PhD 1956, Advisor: Benjamin Bederson
Jacob M. Hammer received the BS in Engineering Physics and the Ph.D. in Physics
in 1950 and 1956 from New York University, New York. He received the MS in Physics
from the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois in 1951. After graduating from
the Bronx High School of Science in 1945, he served in the Medical Detachment of
the Fifth Cavalry Regiment stationed in Japan 1946-47.<.P>
He was a member of the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1956 to 1959. He then joined the technical staff of RCA Laboratories (Now Sarnoff Inc.) where he developed the lowest noise figure (1dB) microwave travelling wave tube ever reported. He spent 1968 as Senior Visitor at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, England. In 1969 he returned to RCA where he was principal investigator on a number of programs. He made important contributions to single crystal optical waveguides and modulators co-authoring the first report of indiffused Lithium Niobate-Lithium Tantalate optical waveguides.
He left to open Photonics Consulting in 1987 working on grating surface emitting semiconductor arrays, tunable and external-waveguide stabilized semiconductor lasers, in-line fiber-optic modulators and integratable optical waveguide isolators based on the use of polycrystalline-metal ferromagnetic layers which he invented. He has done consulting for Sarnoff Inc., General Electric, NASA and the Laboratory for Physical Sciences at The University of Maryland.
He received the New York University Founders Day Award 1956, the RCA Laboratories Achievement Awards for the years 1962, 1964, 1973, 1985, was Elected to Sigma Xi, is listed in Who's Who in America and American Men and Women of Science, and is a Life Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to guided wave optical devices.
He has 28 patented inventions, over 100 publications, is co-editor of the book Surface Emitting Semiconductor Lasers, and has contributed chapters on modulators to two books on integrated optics. He was Associate editor of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics 1987-1989 and served on the U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Optical Communications Task Force, 1975-1981. His most recent work was the evaluation of programs on polarization-insensitive and in-line modulators for fiber-optics communications at the Laboratory for Physical Science at the University of Maryland. He also continues to work on methods for obtaining integratable-waveguide-optical isolators. His proposal to study the use of polycrystalline-ferromagnetic layers for optical isolators that can be integrated with semiconductor materials was awarded an SBIR program from BMDO.