Richard C. Barker

Professor of Engineering and Applied Physics 

Dick Barker, B.E., M.Eng., Ph.D. Yale University, faculty member at Yale since 1952: you are the bluest of the blue. Fourth generation (at least!) Yale graduate, whose father, grandfather and great grandfather preceded you here, one feels sure they would be pleased to have known the success of your career on this faculty. Fine scholar whose research has spanned a wide range of subjects in several important areas of solid-state science and technology; imaginative organizer who founded the lauded Yale Center for Microelectronic Materials and Structures and has directed it since 1984; mentor to scores of graduate students, many of whom are now in universities or in leadership positions in companies around the world; your work has made a significant and respected contribution to your profession. Well known here and abroad, you have received many awards, including most recently a Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Consortium Excellence Award for Mentorship in 1998, and a Millennium Medal at the International Magnetics 2000 Conference in April of this year. 

Respected undergraduate teacher on this faculty, who was awarded the valued Yale College Faculty Prize for Distinguished Teaching in 1986, students noticed the way you taught difficult subject matter with patience and clarity, and gratefully applauded you for it. Thoughtful member of the Yale community, you have always seen the importance of links between the Humanities and the Sciences and have sought to instill this ethic in your colleagues and students. Now as you retire from the ranks of the active faculty, your colleagues say “Boola Boola” to you, true son of Eli, for your legacy, your loyalty and your accomplishment.