Lasting Memories

C. Lester Hogan
1920-Aug. 12, 2008
Atherton, California

C. Lester Hogan, 88, an Atherton resident, died Aug. 12 of complications of Alzheimer's disease.

He was born in Great Falls, Mont. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Montana State College in 1942, a master's degree in physics from Lehigh University in 1947 and a doctorate in physics in 1950. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1942 and served at Pearl Harbor.

After the war, he taught physics at Lehigh and then accepted a position at Bell Laboratories. While at Bell Labs he invented the microwave gyrator. In 1958 he became the general manager of the Motorola Semiconductor Products Division and later was promoted to be the vice-president of operations. In 1968, he accepted the position of president and CEO of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, in which he stayed until his retirement in 1984. Throughout his career he was involved with many organizations and acted as an advisor to several engineering schools, including MIT, Princeton and U.C. Berkeley. In 1976 he received the IEEE Frederick Philips Gold Medal and was awarded the Pioneer Medal of Merit from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Group in 1993.

In 1980 McGraw-Hill's Electronics Magazine named him "one of the 10 greatest innovators of the previous 50 years". He also loved poetry and regularly read it to his daughter.

He is survived by his wife, the former Audrey Biery Peters; daughter, Cheryl Lea Hogan; and two grandsons.