The brilliant and prolific circuit designer Barrie Gilbert, holder of over 100 US patents, who was perhaps best know for a circuit block that carries his name, passed away yesterday after a fall. Among Barrie's better known achievements was the development of the analog display readout employed in the Tektronix 7000 series scopes, the discovery and elucidation of the "Translinear Principle", and the invention of the Gilbert cell, a high-speed analog multiplier technique still in wide use. He was in his early 80s, and had been employed for over 40 years at Analog Devices. He was one of ADI's first Analog Devices Fellows. Over his career he designed a succession of top-selling products for ADI, some of which had product lifetimes measured in decades. He was an absolutely brilliant designer, and had the most intuitive feel for transistor operation of anyone I've ever met. He was also a warm and generous person, more than willing to share his knowledge with anyone with a willingness to learn. I will always be grateful for his encouragement back when I joined ADI in 1982, and for a clever bandgap circuit of his (never published, but disseminated within ADI) that was just the think I needed in one of my IC designs some years ago.
R.I.P. Barrie