Born in Weimar in 1928. Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen in 1952. Moved to the USA. Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, 1968-76; since 1976, with the University of California in Santa Barbara; work at the Institute for Semiconductor Technology on stratified semiconductor structures (hetero structures) for use in lasers and transistors. The hetero-structured transistors he developed theoretically are used, e.g., in modern mobile phones.
He was awarded one half of the Nobel Prize in 2000 together with Zhores Alferov (the other half went to Jack Kilby) for work in solid state physics which has become the foundation of information technology and opto-electronics.
Herbert Kroemer died on 8 March 2024 at the age of 95 in Santa Barbara, USA.