From yesterday’s New York Times:
Robert N. Hall’s legacy can be found at almost every checkout counter—that little red blinking laser scanner that reads bar codes on milk cartons, boxes of light bulbs, price tags dangling from a new jacket and just about everything else that can be bought in a store.
A product of his inventive labor can also be found in most kitchens nowadays: the microwave oven.
Yet for all the widespread familiarity of what Dr. Hall wrought as a remarkably ingenious physicist, his death, at 96, on Nov. 7, 2016, gained little notice.
