Calvin F. Quate was born on 7 December 1923 in Baker, Nevada. He is one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He is a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Calvin F. Quate was born on 7 December 1923 in Baker, Nevada. He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah in 1944, and the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 1950. Quate joined Stanford University in 1961 as Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering. He has served as Chairman of the Applied Physics Department, as Acting Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department, and as Associate Dean in the School of Humanities and Science. Presently he holds the Leland T. Edwards Chair in Engineering at Stanford, and since 1984 has been a Senior Research Fellow at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). In 1992, he received the National Medal Of Science.