Arnold Beckman biography
Profile
Famed electrical engineer and inventor Arnold Orville Beckman was born in Cullom, Illinois, on April 10, 1900. Arnold Beckman worked for Bell Telephone before as a research engineer and taught at the California Institute of Technology before establishing his own firm, Beckman Instruments, to produce scientific instruments of his own invention. Beckman's quartz spectrophotometer made automatic chemical analysis possible. His company developed a long line of products used in medicine, space exploration and other fields. In 1955, he funded the first silicon transistor company, giving rise to Silicon Valley. Beckman died on May 18, 2004, in La Jolla, California. Today, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation contributes to the advancement of scientific research.