Researcher of statistical fluctuations in small semiconductor systems, Fowler is an American physicist born in Denver, Colorado. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. degree in 1951, an M.S. degree in 1952, and from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Applied Physics, in 1958. Fowler worked for IBM from 1958 to 1993, and is an IBM Fellow Emeritus.
He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990. Election to the Academy was considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded an American scientist or engineer.
The society said the new members were elected ''in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.'' He has also been a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He has been a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the IEEE. Fowler has received the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the David Sarnoff Award of the IEE and the Buckley prize of the APS.
He has served as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. Among the many publications Fowler has authored or co-authored are: "A Semicentury of Semiconductors", Physics Today, October 1993; "Electron effective mass enhancement in ultrathin gate-oxide Si-MOSFETs", with M. Dragosavac, D. J. Paul, M. Pepper and D.
A. Buchanan Published in 2005; "Interdisciplinarity and Semiconductors", with Arthur von Hippel, Published in 2005.; "Two-Dimensional Electron Systems", Published in 2000; and Electronic Genie: The Tangled History of Silicon, with Frederick Seitz and Norman G. Einspruch, in the Journal: Physics Today - PHYS TODAY, vol. 51, no. 11, 1998.
