Robert Eugene Kerwin

Robert Kerwin, born to Irish immigrants Thomas Kerwin and Elizabeth O’Driscoll in Quincy, Massachusetts, passed away peacefully at home in Dallas, Texas on July 26, 2024. Bob grew up the youngest of four children near Wollaston Beach, attended North Quincy High School and went on to study chemistry at Boston College. While pursuing his master’s in science from MIT, he met the love of his life and bride of 63 years, Marianne Claire Maguire, who earned her own master’s degree in mathematics. He always claimed the absence of a heater in his broken down car was key to his early courtship on their daily commutes to Cambridge. Upon graduation, they moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Bob completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and began their family with two sons, Colin and Kevin.

Upon accepting a job at the prestigious Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, they moved into a small English Tudor in beautiful Westfield, New Jersey where they made a loving home for over fifty years. Bob’s boys thought he worked in a magical fun house full of mad scientists, sound proof rooms, high speed strobe lights and lasers, powerful microscopes, telescopes and even early computers that you could talk with over your phone line from home.

For his part, Bob was an early pioneer in semiconductors and is celebrated for his invention of the self-aligned silicon-gate process in 1966, a manufacturing technique that allowed for the reliable miniaturization and very large scale integration of transistors on silicon and is still used today in the fabrication of almost every computer chip made in the world. In total, Bob held fifteen patents on microelectronics materials and processes. He was a Bell Laboratories Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists. In 1994 he received the Jack A. Morton Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers “For Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Solid State Devices”, and was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame that same year “For Extraordinary Contributions to the Advancement of Knowledge and Human Welfare”.

While not working, Bob was a prolific reader and NY Times crossword puzzler. He had a deep appreciation for Irish poetry and music, kept in close touch with his ancestral roots in Ireland and loved vacationing in Chatham, Massachusetts. Above all, Bob was a devoted husband and father who cherished every moment spent with his loved ones. A family cross country camping trip in a wood paneled station wagon, seeing the wonder in his boys eyes after “hiding” an AMF Sunfish under the Christmas tree, or laughing with close friends while on Elderhostel trips throughout Europe to name just a few. He will be remembered as a wise, compassionate and kind man whose legacy will live on through his family and his contributions to science. As if on cue, his youngest grandson plans to matriculate at Boston College next month and study chemistry.

Bob was preceded in death by his father Thomas and mother Elizabeth, his brothers Thomas and William, his sister Elizabeth, his wife Marianne and granddaughter Ann Kathryn. He is survived by his two sons, Colin (Barbara) and Kevin (Katy), as well as his five grandchildren Daniel, Colleen (Max), Braden, Erin, and Luke and one great granddaughter, Quincy.

In lieu of flowers, please send memorials to the Ann Kathryn Kerwin Fund at Emmanuel College, 400 The Fenway, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115. Bob will be interred at the Mount Wollaston cemetery next to his wife Marianne and parents Thomas and Elizabeth in a private family service.