An “electronic eye” co-inventor, Nobel laureate (2009) Willard Boyle was a Canadian physicist.
In 1969 Willard Boyle and George Smith, while working in Bell Laboratories, designed the first Charge Coupled Device (CCD). The CCD has become the bedrock of the digital imaging revolution including digital photography and video.
Willard Sterling Boyle was born on Aug. 19, 1924, in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and raised in the village of Wallace. He lived in Wallace at his death.
Boyle died in Truro in 2011.