Charles Stark Draper Prize

The U.S.

Past winners

• 1989: Jack S. Kilby and Robert N. Noyce for their independent development of the monolithic integrated circuit
• 1991: Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain for their independent development of the turbojet engine
• 1993:
  FORTRAN, the first widely used, general purpose, high-level computer language^[3]
• 1995:
  Harold A. Rosen
  for their development of communication satellite technology
• 1997: Vladimir Haensel for his invention of "platforming"
• 1999:
  fiber optics
• 2001:
  Lawrence G. Roberts for the development of the Internet
• 2002:
  Robert Langer for the bioengineering of revolutionary medical drug delivery systems^[4]
• 2003:
  Ivan A. Getting and Bradford W. Parkinson for their work developing the Global Positioning System
• 2004:
  Alto
  , the first practical networked computer
• 2005:
  Corona
  , the first space-based Earth observation systems
• 2006:
  imaging technologies
• 2007: Tim Berners-Lee for developing the World Wide Web^[5]
• 2008: Rudolf E. Kálmán for developing the Kalman filter^[6]
• 2009:
  dynamic random access memory (DRAM), used universally in computers and other data processing and communication systems^[7]
• 2011:
  Willem P.C. Stemmer for their individual contributions to directed evolution, a process that allows researchers to guide the creation of certain properties in proteins and cells. This technique has been used in food ingredients, pharmaceuticals, toxicology, agricultural products, gene delivery systems, laundry aids, and biofuels
• 2012:
  liquid crystal display
  (LCD) technologies
• 2013: Thomas Haug, Martin Cooper, Yoshihisa Okumura (奥村 善久), Richard H. Frenkiel, and Joel S. Engel – mobile phone pioneers who laid the groundwork for cellular telephone networks (GSM) and today's smartphone.^[8]
• 2014:
  John Goodenough, Yoshio Nishi [Wikidata] (西 美緒), Rachid Yazami and Akira Yoshino
  (吉野 彰) – rechargeable battery pioneers who laid the groundwork for today's lithium ion battery.
• 2015:
  Nick Holonyak, Jr. and Shuji Nakamura for the invention, development, and commercialization of materials and processes for light-emitting diodes (LEDs).^[9][10]
• 2016:
  Andrew J. Viterbi for development of the Viterbi algorithm, its transformational impact on digital wireless communications, and its significant applications in speech recognition and synthesis and in bioinformatics.^[11]
• 2018: Bjarne Stroustrup for conceptualizing and developing the C++ programming language.^[12]
• 2020: Jean Fréchet and C. Grant Willson for the invention, development, and commercialization of chemically amplified materials for micro- and nanofabrication, enabling the extreme miniaturization of microelectronic devices.^[13]
• 2022: Steve B. Furber, John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson and Sophie M. Wilson for contributions to the invention, development, and implementation of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips.^[14]
• 2024: Stuart Parkin for engineering spintronic technologies, enabling digital information storage that serves as a foundation for today’s data-driven world.^[15]

The NAE website shows that no Draper Prize was awarded in 2010, 2017, 2019 or 2021.^[16] Since the award is a biennial one, it was probably only given in even years beginning in 2016. The Russ Prize, also from the NAE, is awarded in odd years.

See also

• List of engineering awards

References