T. Peter Brody

Tamas Peter Brody (18 April 1920 – 18 September 2011) was a British-naturalised physicist and the co-inventor of active matrix thin-film transistor display technology together with Fang-Chen Luo, having produced the world's first active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM-LCD) in 1972 and the first functional AM-EL (electroluminescent display) in 1973 while employed by Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh. Brody coined the term "active matrix" and first used it in a published journal article in 1975.

Brody was born in Budapest, Hungary. From early childhood Brody was interested in sports, particularly swimming and rowing, and had a passion for classical music. In 1938 he left his parents and two younger brothers behind in Hungary to learn the family trade at the London College of Printing. He was naturalised as a British subject in January 1948. He served as a designer/draftsman and worked for the Special Operations Executive in the British Army during and after the Second World War, rising to the rank of staff captain.

Brody studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London winning the Lady Mayoress' Prize for piano performance in 1952. Brody met his future wife Maude M. Frost at a Fabian Society dance in London and they married in 1952.

Brody obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of London in 1953 and worked as a senior lecturer at the university until 1959. He moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on being offered the opportunity to work as a researcher for Westinghouse Electric Corporation.

From 1959 to 1979 he did theoretical work on tunnel diodes, semiconductor device theory and experiment, injection luminescence, field emission, pattern recognition, later turning his interest to thin film technology.

Brody died in Pittsburgh, aged 91.

The cathode ray tube, like the brontosaurus, will become extinct, and for the same reason: too much bulk, very little brain.

— T. P. Brody, 1979