Willard Boyle

Willard Sterling Boyle, CC (August 19, 1924 – May 7, 2011) was a Canadian-American physicist, pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. On October 6, 2009, it was announced that he would share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography".

Life

Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, on August 19, 1924, Boyle was the son of a medical doctor and moved to Quebec with his father and mother Beatrice when he was three. He was home schooled by his mother until age fourteen, when he attended Montreal's Lower Canada College to complete his secondary education. Boyle attended McGill University, but his education was interrupted in 1943, when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. He was loaned to the Britain's Royal Navy, where he was learning how to land Spitfires on aircraft carriers as the war ended. He gained a BSc (1947), MSc (1948) and PhD (1950) from McGill University.

James Woods

James Howard Woods (born April 18, 1947) is an American actor and producer. He is often known for villainous roles, and appeared in a variety of films, including The Onion Field (1979), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Salvador (1986), Casino (1995), Nixon (1995), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Hercules (1997) and White House Down (2013). On television, he is known for acting in Shark (2006–2008).

He has been nominated twice for an Academy Award and has won one Golden Globe Award. Additionally, he has won three Emmy Awards – for television movies Promise and My Name Is Bill W., and for the animated series Hercules.

His voice work has been heard in The Simpsons, Family Guy, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and in films such as Stuart Little 2 (as Falcon) and Disney's Hercules (as Hades).

Early life

Woods was born in Vernal, Utah, and had a brother ten years younger than him. His father, Gail Peyton Woods, was an army intelligence officer who died in 1960 after routine surgery. His mother, Martha A. (née Smith), operated a pre-school after her husband's death and later married Thomas E. Dixon. Woods grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he attended Pilgrim High School, from which he graduated in 1965. He is of part Irish descent and was raised Catholic, briefly serving as an altar boy.