Yannis Tsividis´ Early Contributions to MOS Filters

In the 1970s, when the bipolar transistor was the undisputed king of analog integrated circuits (ICs), most electrical engineers regarded the MOS transistor as a second-rate device for ICs: it was a good switch, but a mediocre amplifier. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, under the supervision of Paul Gray, Yannis Tsividis had a very different vision. He saw the MOS transistor as the future star for mixed-signal ICs and was excited to prove to the world he was right. The opening gambit was his thesis work demonstrating the first fully-integrated MOS opamp. This single achievement propelled him to the top of his generation of researchers and earned him a Berkeley PhD degree, a teaching appointment at Columbia University and a consulting position at Bell Laboratories.