Allan Robert Kmetz, a pioneer in liquid crystal display technology, passed away on August 9, 2025, in San Francisco, California. He was 85 years old.
Born on January 23, 1940, in Mount Vernon, New York, Allan attended Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, graduating in 1957. Although he later said that he thought about becoming a lawyer, his high school yearbook described him as an “engineer par excellence,” and he majored in electrical engineering at Yale University after receiving a full scholarship from General Motors. He remained at Yale through graduate school, earning his B.E.E. in 1961, his M.Eng. in 1963, and his D.Eng. in 1969. His doctoral dissertation explored relaxation and threshold phenomena in ferrite memory cores.
In 1962, Allan married his former high school classmate, Joan Teichmann, beginning a partnership that would span more than six decades. They had two children, daughter Lisa, born in 1965, and son John, born in 1966.
After completing his doctoral degree, Allan joined the Advanced Technology Laboratory of Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas, where he advanced research in single-crystal ferroelectrics and nematic liquid crystals. In the early 1970s, he moved to Switzerland to continue groundbreaking work on liquid crystal displays at the Brown Boveri Research Center near the city of Baden. His career later took him to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he contributed to innovations in electro-optic devices and was named a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. Describing the unique collection of intellects at Bell Labs, he would mention the example of a brilliant physicist seen walking the halls backwards due to an inner ear condition. After the AT&T monopoly was broken up, Bell Labs eventually became Agere Systems. Allan continued his research there until his retirement in 2003.
Following retirement, Allan became an independent display technology consultant, specializing in intellectual property and portfolio evaluation. He served as an expert witness in high-profile patent cases and continued to shape the industry and the next generation of engineers through his leadership in various professional organizations.
Allan authored numerous technical papers and co-edited the authoritative reference, “Nonemissive Electrooptic Displays.” He held 16 U.S. patents and 45 foreign patents. He was an active member of the Society for Information Display (SID), was elected an SID Fellow in 1985, served as SID President from 2002-2004, and was selected for the Lewis and Beatrice Winner Award in 2015 in recognition of exceptional and sustained service to the Society. He was also a member of Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and the IEEE Magnetics Society.
Allan’s work enabled the liquid crystal displays first seen in such consumer goods as handheld calculators and digital watches, and later he helped lay the groundwork for today’s flat-panel displays used in computer monitors and televisions. After the Japanese became leaders in the field, he fondly recalled traveling there for conferences with his wife, Joan. He always got a kick out of the respectful enthusiasm for his work from his Japanese colleagues.
Outside of his professional life, Allan loved to sail-a passion he developed as a boy at Camp Idlewild on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. He loved the beach and taking his grandsons to the Jersey shore; he liked to stay at the beach into the late afternoon so that they could watch the supersonic Concorde fly low overhead on arrival from Europe. He also enjoyed astronomy, cooking, the NYT crossword puzzle, Dave Brubeck, target shooting, racquetball at the YMCA, and the occasional martini, up with a twist.
Allan is survived by his beloved wife Joan, his daughter Lisa Partida (Saul), his son John Kmetz (Loretta Bass), and his grandsons, Augustus and Elliott. He is also survived by his aunt, Ruth Kmetz, and his cousins, David and Donna Kmetz, and Patricia, Philip and Alisha Kmetz.