News

The IEEE History Committee is proud to announce its selection of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (2022, Scribner, New York) as the winner of the 2024 IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award.

Authored by economic historian Chris Miller, Ph.D., Professor of International History at the Fletcher School at Tufts University (Medford, MA, US) and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, and other outlets, Chip War chronicles the decades-long battle to control microchip technology within a fiercely competitive global industry.  Lauded as one of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s ‘favorite books of 2023,’ Chip War examines the rise of the semiconductor industry and America’s efforts to remain on the cutting-edge of semiconductor technology – considered “the new oil” on which modern society relies – amid heated competition from China, Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and other formidable and heavily-invested players.

Established in 2014 by a gift from the estates of longtime IEEE leader William W. Middleton and his wife Joyce F. Middleton in the form of a bequest to the IEEE Foundation, the Middleton Award annually recognizes the author of a book (published within the previous three years) on the history of an IEEE-related technology that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities towards a broad public audience.  In making its decision, the IEEE History Committee found that Chip War both promoted the preservation and dissemination of information about the history of an IEEE field of interest and fulfilled the goals of the Middleton Award across a wide range of IEEE technologies.

“I’m honored that Chip War has received the 2024 IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award,” said Dr. Miller of the recognition, which carries a prize of US$2,000.  “In Chip War, I tried to tell the story of the individuals who produced the advances in semiconductors that today undergird nearly all modern technology, alongside the broad economic and political forces that shaped the development of the chip industry.  I hope Chip War has helped illustrate the drama and the significance of the semiconductor industry and its impact on modern history.”

Miller is the 10th recipient of the IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award.  Past recipients include:

• 2015:  W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton University Press)
• 2016:  Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (Simon & Schuster)
• 2017:  Megan Prelinger, Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (Norton & Co.)
• 2018:  Marc Raboy, Marconi: The Man who Networked the World (Oxford University Press)
• 2019:  Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age (Simon & Schuster)
• 2020:  Lillian Hoddeson and Peter K. Garrett,The Man Who Saw Tomorrow: The Life and Inventions of Stanford R. Ovshinsky (MIT Press)
• 2021:  Martin Collins, A Telephone for the World: Iridium, Motorola, and the Making of a Global Age, (2018, Johns Hopkins Press)
• 2022:  David A. Price, Geniuses At War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age (2021, Alfred A. Knopf, New York)
• 2023:  Kathy Kleiman, Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer (2022, Grand Central Publishing, New York)

For more information on the IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award visit https://www.ieee.org/about/history-center/middleton-award.html.