Professor Penfield received his B.A. in physics from Amherst College in 1955, and the Sc.D. degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1960. He has been in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science since 1960. He served as Associate Head of the Department from 1974 to 1978, and as Director of the Microsystems Research Center from 1985 to 1989. From 1989 to 1999 he served as Head of the Department. Professor Penfield is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Physical Society. He is the author of five books and dozens of articles in his various fields of interest, which include solid-state microwave devices and circuits, noise and thermodynamics, electrodynamics of moving media, circuit theory, computer-aided design, APL language extensions, integrated-circuit design automation, and computer-aided fabrication of integrated circuits.