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Look at the Big Picture
Virgil Elings, Ph.D.
Virgil Elings earned his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT and currently holds 42 patents. He was a member of the Faculty of Physics at UC Santa Barbara for 20 years. Dr. Elings founded Digital Instruments, Inc. while on sabbatical leave in 1987 (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Veeco Corporation [Nasdaq: VECO]) and served as the company's President and Chairman of the Board until his retirement in 1999. The firm remains the global leader in the design and manufacture of scanning probe microscopes, including scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopes (These microscopes magnify objects 10-20 million times, enabling scientists to view materials at the atomic level). In 1998, the company was acquired and Dr. Elings retired a year later. Today, he spends time at his horse ranch, watching his lavender and oil fields grow, flying model airplanes, and enjoying his vintage motorcycle museum in Solvang, CA. He is quoted on a visit to MIT "One of the most important things I learned at MIT was from a technician working in the Physics department. I asked him one day to show me how the oscilloscope worked, since I'd forgotten whatever I'd learned in undergraduate labs. Bill Lobar said, 'fiddle with the knobs, you'll figure it out.' He was right, and it works with almost everything in life."Program Recording Date & Length: 3-2-06 • 58 Minutes
