Young D. Kwon

Young Duck Kwon, Ph.D., passed away peacefully February 10, 2026, at the age of 90 years old, joining his wife who preceded him. Born in South Korea in 1935, he lived to see the end of both World War II with the subsequent liberation of South Korea from Japanese rule and the Korean War.

In grade school, his father passed away, so his family struggled to make ends meet until he graduated from the prestigious Seoul National University with a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Seoul National University is sometimes called the “Harvard of Korea” and is the #1 ranked university in Korea. Upon graduation, he secured a job at a power plant and became another pillar of his family.

However, shortly afterwards, Young emigrated from Korea to the USA to study for his doctoral degree at University of New Mexico. This was primarily to gain approval from the family of his soon-to-be wife, but he quickly came to believe in the American Dream. After a little over 2 years, he was able to finally marry his beloved wife, Hae Sun Dan.

Again, after graduation, he worked briefly for such prestigious and cutting-edge companies as Motorola and Bell Labs. However, in 1969, he decided to join the California State University – Fullerton as a professor. Dedicated to education, he taught for 40 years and consulted with several of South Korea’s nascent companies in semiconductor chip development and production in the early 1980’s.

He holds several patents and published his last paper in 2006: “Theory of the screened Coulomb field generated by impurity ions in semiconductors” in Physical Review B, a professional journal.

He enjoyed the outdoors, travelling, playing golf, reading technical journals, gardening, and playing with his grandchildren. In his last years, he spent considerable time writing his 900-page memoir and managed to finish despite his advancing Alzheimer’s. He is survived by his sons: Daniel and Thomas, and his grandchildren: Kaelyn, Addison, Kelvin, Brandon, and Sophia.