Thomas Eugene Everhart

Thomas Eugene Everhart
Everhart in 1987
5th President of the California Institute of Technology
In office
1987–1997
Preceded byMarvin Goldberger
Succeeded byDavid Baltimore
4th Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In office
1984–1987
Preceded byJohn E. Cribbet
Succeeded byMorton W. Weir
Personal details
Born (1932-02-15) February 15, 1932
Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
EducationHarvard University (BA)
University of California, Los Angeles (MS)
Clare College, Cambridge (PhD)
AwardsMarshall Scholarship (1955)
IEEE Centennial Medal (1984)
Clark Kerr Award (1992)
ASEE Centennial Medallion (1993)
IEEE Founders Medal (2002)
Okawa Prize (2002)
Scientific career
FieldsElectrical Engineering, Applied Physics
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, California Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge
ThesisContrast formation in the scanning electron microscope (1958)
Doctoral advisorCharles Oatley

Thomas Eugene Everhart FREng (born February 15, 1932, in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American university president, educator, and physicist. His area of expertise is the physics of electron beams. Together with Richard F. M. Thornley he designed the Everhart–Thornley detector. These detectors are still in use in scanning electron microscopes, even though the first such detector was made available as early as 1956.

Everhart was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 for contributions to the electron optics of the scanning electron microscope and to its use in electronics and biology. He was appointed an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1990. He served as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1984 to 1987 and as the president of the California Institute of Technology from 1987 to 1997.