Donald L. Klein, Ph.D. '49 Silicon Gate Transistor Inventor The leader of the team at Bell Telephone Laboratories that created the polysilicon Field-Effect Transistor in 1966, Dr. Klein’s advance has been the key to very large scale integrated circuits and the advancement of computers and communications technologies. The innovative breakthrough was to employ polycrystalline silicone in a self-aligned process to replace the previously used thin metal films. It has become the standard process for manufacturing all silicon semiconductor memory and microprocessor circuit chips.