Paul A. Moskowitz

Inventor of the Radio Frequency Circuit and Memory in thin flexible package that forms the basis for the design of today's RFID tags for the retail supply chain, Moskowitz has been awarded over one hundred United States patents and is recognized as an expert on the physics of RFID. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City and received his Ph.D. in Physics from New York University. He held research and teaching positions at the University of Grenoble, France, the University of Mainz, Germany, and the University of Colorado. His early work in the area of nuclear physics resulted in the publication of the Moskowitz-Lombardi rule.

He has served as a Research Staff Member working in the Pervasive Computing Solutions Department at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, NY. His area of research centered on data privacy protection for automotive telematics, privacy for wireless technology, including innovation of the "Clipped Tag" for RFID consumer privacy, and the creation of intellectual property (patenting). The Wall Street Journal cited the Clipped Tag on its list of 2006 Technology Innovation Winners. In 2007, the RFid Gazette selected him as one of nine individuals who were among the top 25 influencers in the RFID industry.

The privacy-protecting RFID tag, the "Clipped Tag," was suggested by IBM as a consumer privacy mechanism. The clipped tag put the option of privacy protection in the hands of the consumer. It provided a visible means of enhancing privacy protection by allowing the transformation of a long-range tag into a proximity tag that could still be read, but only at short range—less than a few inches or centimeters. This enabled later use of the tag for returns or recalls. Two US patents were issued for this invention in 2007. In 2014, Moskowitz was included in a list of Top IBM Employees by Ranker. He also represented IBM at the Hardware Action Group of EPCglobal.

Among his patents was United States Patent 5,528,222, "Radio frequency circuit and memory in thin flexible package." This invention formed the basis for the design of today's RFID tags for the retail supply chain. These tags are manufactured in the hundreds of millions. The United States patent states "The elements of the package (substrate, antenna, and laminated covers) are flexible. The elements of the package are all thin. The tag is thin and flexible, enabling a unique range of applications including: RFID tagging of credit cards, passports, admission tickets, and postage stamps." This patent was cited as a reference by over five hundred US patents. It was the subject of litigation between some of the major players in the RFID field, e.g. between Intermec and Symbol Technologies and between Intermec and Alien Technology.

Another of his patents was United States Patent 6,163,250, titled "System and method for sensing objects on surface of vehicle." According to the patent, "Typically, vehicle drivers and/or passengers place objects on, for example, the roof or hood of their vehicle. Often, the driver and/or passengers forget that they have placed the objects there, and proceed to enter the car and drive away. The objects are usually grocery or food items, or beverages such as coffee or soft drinks, etc., but may include other items. Indeed, in one reported case, a baby was placed on the top of a vehicle and the vehicle driver drove away without knowing the baby was on the roof of the vehicle. The results of this sequence of events range from the comic to the tragic." As reported by the New York Times in 2001, the patent provided a system such that "objects adjacent or on the surface of a vehicle (e.g., on the vehicle hood, roof or trunk) can be reliably sensed and preventive measures may be taken by the driver and/or passenger." In 2011, Google purchased the "coffee cup on the car" patent along with over one thousand other patents. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The Google spokesman declined to comment on the purchase price."

While working at the University of Grenoble in France, Moskowitz and French Physicist Maurice Lombardi published an empirical relation that came to be called the Moskowitz-Lombardi rule, or ML rule. The rule helps give nuclear physicists insight into the complex structure of the atomic nucleus, which may contain two hundred or more individual protons and neutrons. An investigation by T. Fujita and A. Arima (Nucl. Phys. 1975) found the M-L rule to yield results closer to the measured values than did calculations based upon nuclear theory. The rule has been applied to isotopes of elements including mercury, iridium, gold, thallium, platinum, tungsten, osmium, and barium. T. Asaga, et al. proposed measuring the systematics of the nuclear properties of a series of europium isotopes to test the universality of the rule (Z. Phys. 1997). Researchers at Mainz, S. Trapp et al. (Hyperfine Interactions, 2000), indicated that they planned to pursue experimental europium measurements.

Author Clifford A. Pickover granted permission to use information from his book Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-533611-5.