Honorary Eminent Members are deceased practitioners of electrical or computer engineering who otherwise meet all the qualifications for being honored as an Eminent Member, but who were not named during their lifetimes.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) Invented the carbon-button transmitter still used in phones today; established Edison Electric Light Company; patented over 1,000 discoveries including the commercial phonograph, the Kinetoscope, the Edison storage battery, the electric pen, the mimeograph, and the microtasimeter; introduced the first talking moving pictures; president of the U.S. Navy Consulting Board
Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890-1954) Advanced and patented technologies for regenerative feedback circuits, the superheterodyne radio receiver, and a frequency-modulation radio broadcasting system; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame; first recipient of the Medal of Honor of the IRE
John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995) Inventor and co-builder of the first electronic digital computer; EE professor, Iowa State; vice resident, Aerojet General; president, Cybernetics; U.S. Navy Distinguished Service Award; Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) President, AIEE; inventor and promoter of the telephone; teacher of the deaf; winner of the Edison Medal
Walter House Brattain (1902-1983) (HMIEEE) Co-inventor of the transistor with John Bardeen; co-Nobelist in Physics with Bardeen and William Shockley
Philo Farnsworth (1906-1971) (FIRE) Inventor and developer of early television, especially cathode ray tubes
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) (FIRE) Senior mathematician at Eckert-Mauchly Computer (later Sperry); developer or compiler programs; research fellow at Harvard's Computation Laboratory; Rear-Admiral, U.S. Navy (First woman so named; U.S. Navy ship named in her honor); National Medal of Technology
Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) (FIRE) Director of Research, General Electric; contributor to the science of electrical engineering and electron tubes; Nobel Prize, 1932
Robert Noyce (1927-1990) (FIEEE) Co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel; developer of ICS and the microprocessor chip; IEEE Medal of Honor; co-winner of Draper Prize (with Jack Kilby); National Medal of Science
David Packard (1912-1996) (FIRE) Co-founder with William Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard; U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense; Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award