Rockport resident, Rose was a notable North Shore physicist and entrepreneur who founded seminal global manufacturing companies in Gloucester (Extrion Corp. 1971/ then Varian/now Applied) and Beverly (Nova Assoc, 1978)/now Axcelis). Who were the customers? Who wasn’t! Intel, IBM, …Rose received a National Medal of Technology in 1996 for his work on ion implantation. He was awarded a PhD in physics in 1955 from London University.

I enjoyed this video clip from a panel discussion held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, April 1-2, 2008:

Risto Puhakka Moderator: “A lot of the ion implantation technology really came from the– and still is in– the North Shore of Boston. What was the biggest contributing factor that it all practically came from there which is today’s ion implementation technology?”

Peter H Rose: “Well it started (on the North Shore) because that’s where we built the companies. It’s where we lived.

And in fact we did suffer– or maybe we didn’t suffer– from the fact that we were isolated from silicon valley. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if we started a company (there) my guess is that there would have been 20 start-ups in the second year. Luckily we’re far enough away that the technology didn’t leak out quite so quickly.”

from YouTube credit: Peter Rose joined a panel moderated by Risto Puhakka of VLSI Research to discuss the development of ion implantation. The panel was part of a conference organized by SEMI and the Chemical Heritage Foundation called Empowering the Silicon Revolution: the Past, Present and Future of the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Industry, held April 1-2, 2008 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.