Cory Hall 1969

Only after I had mentioned the SEEC notes to Bob Meyer, I saw a glimmer of interest rising in his eyes. I had finished some courses in the Fall Trimester of 1969 in Cory Hall at UC Berkeley, where I had arrived with a BAEF fellowship from Belgium. I had to put in a lot of time as these homeworks somehow always turned out to be just a bit more difficult than I thought. My fellowship only lasted one year. I had come to UC Berkeley to do a PhD. So it was time to find a supervisor and financial support. This is why I was touring around in the EE department to find out whom I could possibly work with and what topics were available. Of course I had seen Don Pederson already. I had taken his class 141 and had designed a simple operational amplifier, with great success. Also I had laid out an opamp, on such small area that I was really happy about it. Unfortunately Don was talking about oscillators, which I interpreted to be insulators. My English understanding was not yet that good at that time! I realize now that I simply misunderstood. Anyway I didn´t want to work on insulators, because that was technology and I wanted to be in circuits. Moreover my academic advisor Bill Oldham had already talked to me about insulators. It was thus already clear in my mind that insulators were not going to be my subject. Dave Hodges and Paul Gray hadn´t arrived yet at Berkeley. My options were thus limited.