Emily Underwood, daughter of Jim Underwood
In his retirement, James used his engineering skills to restore and build musical instruments. He built a Finnish Jjouhikko from scratch and would play it at Christmastime dressed in a Santa costume. He was also passionate about cycling, he competed in multiple distance races and each year on his birthday would ride as many miles as the age he was turning, often joined by his daughter Emily.
In 2017, James was delighted to welcome his grandson Leo into the world, who shares his love of animals. Both his daughters, Ellen and Emily, loved his silly exuberance and his unique perspective on the world. He will be dearly missed.
Tom Carroux, nephew of Jim Underwood
James Underwood was my uncle through his marriage to my aunt Sylvi Underwood. His love for Sypi was such that Jimmy became fluent in the Finnish language, a difficult language, and who, for fun, made classic Finnish string instruments by hand, which he played while performing with a Finnish band during holidays in Finland. I knew Uncle Jimmy was a scientist, that he had worked at NASA, but was nonetheless impressed when he proudly showed me photographs addressed to him and autographed by astronauts who had walked the moon. He was a good man, generous, engaging and full of good cheer. One of a kind that James Underwood.
Attached are a few photographs, including one from David Richardson’s Facebook post (Jimmy is wearing a Mexican sombrero). Also, here is a YouTube video of James Underwood playing one of his Finnish string instruments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgBWsQSTtJc
Dave Attwood, colleague at Berkeley Lab
James H. Underwood, Jim to his many friends and collaborators, was a world leader in the development of x-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) optics for diverse applications, and a wonderful human being who collaborated with many. Jim received the PhD in Physics from the U. Leicester, UK, in 1963, where he developed a strong interest in x-ray optics and EUV astronomy.
Following graduation he came to the US to work as a postdoc at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. From there to the Aerospace Corporation, and then to Stanford’s Applied Science Department where he was a Senior Research Associate. He then went to Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he was Principal Scientist for x-ray/EUV telescopes on Skylab.
Following that he joined LBL as co-founder of the Center for X-ray Optics (CXRO), where he designed and led construction of the first beamline at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). This was a low-cost beamline based on a multilayer coated, Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) mirror pair, focusing 6 keV photons to a nominally one micron focal spot, which he developed with colleagues Albert Thompson and Phillip Batson. In its earliest days, just after ‘first light’ at the ALS (just after midnight, Oct. 4/5, 1993), this beamline (10.1) enabled a broad array of scientific results, e.g., detecting iron contaminants at the femtogram and ppb level in contaminated commercial solar cells, showed that a claimed ‘Viking map’ of North America was a fraud (the inks were recent vintage), and details of the poison in a spider’s fang.
Jim led the building of other beamlines at the ALS, principally the ‘Calibration and Standards Beamline (6.3.2) ‘, which he developed with Eric Gullikson. This, as several other beamlines to follow, utilized a novel ‘varied line space grating monochromator’, co-developed with Michael Hettrick, which provided excellent spectral resolution with only a single rotary motion, which was thus stable and provided a significant cost saving.
This ALS highly accurate reflectivity beamline, 6.3.2, played an important role in the development of EUV lithography, the electronic patterning technique used in all present-day advanced computer chips and cell phones. It was demonstrated at beamline 6.3.2, by Regina Soufli, Eberhard Spiller and Eric Gullikson, that multilayer coated high numerical aperture (NA) reflective optics could achieve requisite angle-dependent d-space variation across the mirror.
Jim also played a much acknowledged pioneering role in the early history of EUV lithography with a paper published in the journal Nature (1981) with colleague Troy Barbee, showing that it was possible to achieve modest resolution imaging with a normal incidence multilayer coated x-ray mirror. This and later publications by Barbee and Underwood, showing high normal incidence reflectivity in the EUV, led to the fully considered EUVL paper by Hiroo Kinoshita of Japan, widely considered the launch of EUVL, in which he acknowledged the importance of the normal incidence Nature paper.
Along this path Jim published many scientific papers and book chapters, among them a review paper on “X-Ray Optics” for American Scientist (66, 476, July 1978), the Nature paper mentioned above (294, 429, 1981), “Layered Synthetic Microstructures as Bragg Diffractors for X-rays and Extreme Ultraviolet: Theory and Predicted Performance”, (Applied Optics, 20, 3027, 1Sept. 1981), “The Renaissance of X-ray Optics” (Physics Today, p.44, April 1984), and two very valuable book chapters, “Imaging Properties and Aberrations of Spherical Optics and Nonspherical Optics” and “Spectrographs and Monochromators Using Varied Line Space Gratings”, in the books Vacuum Ultraviolet Spectroscopy I and II, edited by J.A. Samson and D.L. Ederer (Academic Press, New York, 1998). Copies of both are in the ALS library.
Jim Underwood will be remembered as an excellent scientist, colleague and mentor to many. He was such a fine person, he will be missed by all fortunate to have known him.
Wayne McKinney, colleague at Berkeley Lab
Jim had critical contributions to mirror coatings, and mirror design and construction, including bendable mirrors. He was an early champion of variable line spaced gratings, a technology slowly embraced by the ALS, but proven very valuable in the long run. Although he was not formally in the loop on later overall optical design aspects of beamline design, his parallel work in the CXRO influenced essential details of beamline components and construction.
Phil Batson, colleague at Berkeley Lab
When I first started working with Jim Underwood, I was asked to build a device that would hold a small mirror. Jim explained that he did not like big and bulky things. I designed and built the mirror holder for him and when I showed him the final product, he grabbed it, bent it back and forth and it broke into two pieces. That was the beginning of our great working relationship.
On another note, I also remember being in the copy room making view graphs for a meeting. We had a very fast copy machine and it was spitting out the view graphs. Jim was catching my spelling errors as they were flashing past. That was a measure of how fast Jim’s mind operated.
It was from Jim that I learned about x-rays and optical systems. Jim was the master of beamline optical design. He made it seem so simple. Perhaps my favorite time with Jim is when he coordinated with LLNL to build a spectrometer that would look for the narrowing of an x-ray spectrum of their x-ray laser. Jim and I were there for the tests. It took three shots of the two beam Nova laser, to get the instruments aligned and when they developed the film from the streak camera, there was the narrowing of the spectrum, helping prove it was the world’s first x-ray laser.
Thanks to Jim, I was a part of that very exciting moment. And as time passed, I was involved in many great projects with Jim.
My favorite Jim story was when he learned to play the Flamenco guitar. He had traveled to Barcelona Spain, maybe even to take lessons. While in Barcelona, he went into the subway and proceeded to put out his hat and started playing. He earned enough to buy breakfast. He said that was one of his biggest achievements in life. It may have been the one that was hardest for him, as I think all of the science stuff just came very easily.
The last time I saw Jim, we were traveling on River Road, at the stop sign in Monte Rio there was a bike rider waiting to cross the road. I realized it was Jim and I got out of the car and yelled, “Are you the world famous Jim Underwood?” Jim was on his road bike and somehow I was able to recognize him. Jan and I had a brief conversation with him. We learned that he was planning on moving to Southern California to be closer to his daughter. He then said he needed to go as he was hot and sweaty and didn’t want to get cold.
Jim was one of the most brilliant men I have ever met – but he was also one of the most talented, zany, life loving and kind person to know. Jim Underwood was a first class character and will be missed by everyone that knew him.
Patrick Naulleau, CEO of EUV Tech
One of the most important unsung pioneers in the field of EUV was James Underwood. Jim was essential in enabling the field of EUV Lithography with his pioneering work in the development of soft-x-ray and EUV multilayers, as described in his 1981 Nature publication called “Soft X-ray imaging with a normal incidence mirror” and followed up by his 1982 SPIE paper, called “X-Ray And Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Using Layered Synthetic Microstructures.” Ironically, many of the “next” wavelengths and coatings now being discussed for the further extension of EUV lithography are the same ones Jim worked on in the early 80s.
In addition to laying the groundwork, Jim played a significant direct role in EUV Lithography, both technically and at the organizational level. Jim Underwood was a co-founder of the Center for X-Ray Optics and of EUV Tech, the company where I am now proud to serve as CEO. On a personal front, I had the honor and pleasure of working side by side with Jim and witnessing brilliance in action, coupled with incredible, intuitive, hands-on experimentalist skills. On top of all that, Jim was an extremely kind, generous, humble, and authentic human with an amazing zest for life and technology.
I truly have Jim Underwood to thank for my entire career, given that he was instrumental in founding both organizations I have had the honor to call home, as well as enabling the very technology that has been the center of my entire post-graduate life.
Jim, thank you for all you did for this technology in general and all you did for me personally. I will miss you.
Dave Houser, CTO of EUV Tech
One of my fondest memories of Jim is walking the IMEC grounds in Leuven, searching for, and eventually finding, the perfect stone to help reshape a troublesome component. In a world filled with complexity, Jim reminded me that the simplest solution was often right there at our feet.
His mentorship taught me many lessons over the years, but I remember that moment as if it were yesterday. His influence was, and will remain, just as enduring.
Rupert Perera, Founder of EUV Tech
Jim was more than just my co-founder; he was a dear friend.
Our journey together spans decades. It began when he hired me to work alongside him at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and our scientific journey continued in 1997 when we founded EUV Tech. From the very beginning, we shared a singular purpose: not to pursue revenue goals, but to be the best and to build something the world had never seen before. This shared commitment led us to create the world’s first standalone Reflectometer. That longevity of shared work and purpose is something I will always value deeply.
Jim brought extraordinary knowledge, insight, and ingenuity to everything he did, but what I will remember most is the person behind the science and technology. He was, quite simply, the most honest and kind person I have ever known. It was a privilege to work alongside him and to call him my friend. His contributions to EUV lithography and EUV multilayers are immeasurable. I only wish Jim could see how impactful his scientific discoveries and research have advanced EUV and soft X-ray technology today.
The world is very much a lesser place without James Underwood. I miss him deeply.