J. E. Greene

Joseph "Joe" E. Greene, known in his professional writing as J. E. Greene (November 25, 1944 – October 10, 2022) was an American materials scientist, specializing in thin films, crystal growth, surface science, and advanced surface engineering.

His research and scientific contributions in these areas have been described as "pioneering" and "seminal" and that his work "revolutionized the hard-coating industry".

Greene studied at the University of Southern California, earning a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1967, a M.S. in Electrical Engineering/Materials Science in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science in 1971.

The title of his dissertation was Glow Discharge Spectroscopy for the Analysis of Thin Films.

While studying at USC, Greene was a founder and director of Materials Development Corporation from 1969 until 1971.

In 1971, Greene was hired by the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Department of Mechanical Engineering, Metallurgy and Mining as an assistant professor, and was promoted to full professor in 1979.

In 1984, Greene served as a Visiting Professor in the Physics Department at Linköping University in Sweden.

Among his many professional organization memberships, Greene was elected President of the American Vacuum Society in 1989 and served as both a Trustee and member of that organization's Board of Directors for multiple terms beginning in 1983.

This led to years of collaborative and highly productive research with Swedish colleagues that eventually earned Greene the position of Tage Erlander Professor of Materials Physics at Linköping University beginning in 1994.

Greene also held a Chaired Professorship in Materials Science from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.

Over the course of his career, Greene supervised over seventy Ph.D. students at the three universities where he held professorships, as well as hosting over 100 visiting scientists and post-doctoral researchers.

Greene was a member of numerous professional organizations, including:

In 1998, he was named as the university's first D. B. Willett College of Engineering Professor, "in recognition of his research and his outstanding teaching reputation".

Through 1999, Greene had been named an "outstanding teacher" every semester he taught at the University of Illinois.

From 1999 until 2004 he was the director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory and the Center for Microanalysis of Materials.

Greene retired as a Professor Emeritus from the UIUC Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2005.

As of 2019, Greene's career spanned more than five decades and during that time his scientific output consisted of "over 625 research and review articles, 29 book chapters, four co-edited books, 525 invited talks, and 140 plenary lectures".

A primary focus of his research was "the development of an atomic-level understanding of adatom/surface interactions during vapor-phase crystal growth".

Greene and his research team conducted the first systematic study of the effects of the ion/metal flux ratio and ion energy on microstructure evolution in hard coatings.

Their determinations of the properties of this class of materials are considered reference standards in the field.

He also developed a new class of metastable semiconducting alloys, which became known as the "Greene alloys".

In addition, his work on the development of Si atomic layer epitaxy (ALE), including mapping the basic surface science of Si ALE, are considered seminal contributions in that field and the real-world application of these studies "has since been implemented by electronic companies in the United States and Japan".

His publications have been cited more than 30,000 times by other scholars.

Greene received numerous awards and recognition for his research, teaching, and service to the scientific community.

In October 2019, the journal Thin Solid Films dedicated a special issue to Greene that contained "54 new and review articles by scientists from around the globe who wish to acknowledge Joe's positive influence on the field of thin film physics as well as on their careers and research".

Significant awards and honors include the following:

He was married to Phyllis Greene.

He was a mountaineering enthusiast and volunteered as a search and rescue ranger at the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

In addition to numerous scholarly journal articles, Greene co-edited four books: