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From the archive: George Heilmeier talks about his role in scientific discoveries from LCDs to stealth aircraft


File 2005/Staff Photo

In 2005, Dr. George Heilmeier received the Kyoto Prize for scientific research for his research on the effects of light on organic materials, which led to the development of liquid crystal displays.

This profile was originally published in The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 21, 2005.

Owners of those nifty flat TVs and computer monitors have George Heilmeier to thank.

The Dallas resident pioneered a technology called the liquid crystal display in the 1960s. LCDs were first used to produce the angular numbers on digital clocks, gas pumps and pocket calculators. Lately, the technology has become one of the most popular ways to make TVs trim and sexy. 

Despite all this, Dr. Heilmeier isn't a household name. But he is getting some recognition for his discoveries. In November, he'll receive the Kyoto Prize, known as Japan's version of the Nobel Prize. It comes with a $460,000 award and a lot of demands, including speeches and meetings with Japanese bigwigs.

Not bad for a guy raised in a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia, the first of his family to get a high school diploma. He was a young, ambitious scientist in RCA's laboratories when he did his liquid-crystal work, and he went on to a long and varied career in the technology industry. 

He worked in the Defense Department during the Nixon and Ford administrations and became head of its experimental technology unit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in 1974. In that job, he worked on the project that would become the stealth airplane. 

Later, he was chief information officer at Texas Instruments, the company that brought him to Dallas in 1977.

He left town in 1991 to become CEO of Bell Communications Research, then came back after that business was sold in 1997. Dr. Heilmeier and his wife, Janet, wanted to be closer to their three grandchildren in Texas.

But Dr. Heilmeier has hardly settled down. He's a member of the government's Defense Science Board and the National Security Agency Advisory Board, and he's a trustee at Fidelity Investments, among other corporate governance positions. 

He travels during the week and tries his best to spend weekends at his Far North Dallas home, where this interview was conducted.

Q: You discovered the scientific principles behind liquid crystal displays by exploring the way organic materials and electronics interacted. How did your bosses at RCA react when you told them about your work?

What we had found was immediately classified, and we couldn't write papers about it or talk about it publicly. That was a very exciting time, because we were making progress like crazy. It wasn't announced to the world until 1968, and the original discoveries were made in the 1963 to 1964 timeframe.

What's it like to invent something?

It was really exciting. We knew we were onto something, and all the big shots at RCA were coming to visit us. They would ooh and aah and whatnot.

You left RCA to become a White House Fellow and were eventually appointed to head the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. What happened during your time there?

We really made some fantastic gains in military technology - for example, the first stealth airplane. We also essentially discovered ways to not only detect submerged submarines, but to locate them. At that time, there was a huge submarine threat from the Soviets, and there were ballistic missile submarines that had been deployed in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Being able to not only detect them but localize them was a tremendously important development.

We also did a lot of work on "smart" weapons. I became very, very proud of what we were doing because we were making a huge difference.

Prouder than you were of the work at RCA?

I always felt that the LCD work was something I did when I was very, very young. It was exciting, but what I did in the Pentagon in the '70s was really important. 

The salaries weren't all that good, but I was working with people that I really respected and really admired. That's when I met Colin Powell, for example.

What was he like back then?

Nice guy. I met him as a White House Fellow. He became a military assistant to the secretary of defense, and when I had something I really needed to get forward, he was the guy standing by the door, so to speak. And he would always let me right in, no problem.

DARPA is known as a pretty secretive organization. Was it all cloak-and-dagger stuff?

Not everything DARPA did was black, but there were a couple of programs, really very, very important programs, that were black.

When my daughter was in elementary school, the kids had to come in and talk about what work their mother and father did. When it came to be her turn, she said, "Well, I don't know what Dad does exactly, but we think he's good at it."

Is there anything from that your Defense Department tenure that you're still not allowed to talk about?

Yeah. There's one thing. [Long, uncomfortable pause.]

You're a big Philadelphia Eagles fan. Was it difficult moving to Cowboys territory when you joined TI?

We like the Cowboys now that Tex Schramm is gone. When we first got down here, the Cowboys never lost a game, honestly. It was always "The refs were against us" or "They made us wear the blue jerseys." After Jerry Jones took over and Jimmy Johnson coached the Cowboys, we kind of liked them because they started to admit when they got beaten that they deserved to lose.

What new or emerging technology gets you excited?

Cognitive computing really gets me excited. It's a whole new age of computing that's in the early research stage now that, from my standpoint, will be extremely important.

It's a transition from systems that do as we say to systems that do what we mean. For example, a system that can learn. Systems that can pursue goals over time. Systems that can learn from experience. That's the basis of cognitive computing. 

As a matter of fact, DARPA's making a fairly large investment in that.

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