>Not many individuals are attributed (rightly or no) with saving
>society 15 Trillion dollars with their inventions .
>
>One who is, is Jayant Baliga.
>How many engineers have heard of him or know what his "great
>development" was (amongst his 100 or so patents)?
>
>      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Jayant_Baliga
>
>The relevant development is "obvious enough" in retrospect -  an "It
>Steam Engines come Steam Engine time" event. Apparently not so obvious
>prior to its 'invention'. A lot of people were active in the field in
>parallel with JB being among the leaders in developing practical
>implementations of the theoretical devices.
>
>
>Along the way termed a
>
>  - ?V-groove MOSFET device with the drain region replaced by a p-type
>Anode Region?
>   - insulated gate rectifier (IGR)
>  -  insulated-gate transistor (IGT)
>  -  conductivity-modulated field-effect transistor (COMFET)
>  -  "bipolar-mode MOSFET".
>Nowadays, usually, IGBT.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated_gate_bipolar_transistor
>
>
>  Russell
>