Ohl, Russell, 1898-1987

Russell Ohl was born in 1898 near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He enrolled at Penn State at age sixteen in 1914, and graduated with a degree in electrochemical engineering in 1919. After graduation, Ohl joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps becoming familiar with radio technology. Ohl then left the field of electrochemistry and began teaching and studying physics at the University of Colorado. He left Colorado after two years to take a job working with radios at AT&T. Ohl began working at Bell Laboratories in 1927 as a radio research engineer. His research while at AT&T and Bell Labs, especially with silicon, was integral to the creation of radar, transistors, solar batteries, and semiconductors. Ohl holds 82 United States patents and around 40 international patents. He retired from Bell Labs in 1958 and moved to California, where he lived until his death in March 1987.