Jacques Pankove was born in Russia in 1922 and lived in France for nearly 20 years. To evade Nazi persecution, Jacques and his family came to the United States in 1942, where he became an accomplished electrical engineer and worked for RCA. Jacques is Professor Emeritus at CU in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He and his wife Ethel live in Boulder. Dr. Jacques I. Pankove obtained his BSEE in 1944 and his MSEE in 1948, both from the University of California. He joined the RCA Laboratories shortly thereafter in 1948. This timeframe coincided with the initial work on transistors done at RCA, and Dr. Pankove was instrumental in developing the alloy junction transistor technology at the RCA Labs. In 1956, he was awarded a “David Sarnoff Fellowship” to study at the University of Paris, France, where he was granted a Ph.D. His doctoral research topic there was the study of infrared radiation from surface properties of germanium. He has been active in the field of semiconductor research ever since, authoring over 250 papers, a textbook, 10 edited volumes, and has over 93 patents issued.