ASML’s tech DNA was formed by an immigrant

With chip lithography, in the end, it all comes down to precision and optics. Sixty years ago, these two disciplines were separate worlds. The laser interferometer still had to be invented. At the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (Natlab), however, the knowledge of precise movement and light was already united in a special research group at the beginning of the seventies. This seemingly simple decision laid the foundation for Philips’ two biggest successes in the 80s and beyond: the compact disc and the wafer stepper. It took vision to merge the two research topics into one group. The visionary wasn’t a Dutchman but an immigrant, the brilliant Hans Joachim – Hajo – Meyer.

When he was fourteen, Meyer heard that he could no longer attend high school in his hometown of Bielefeld because he was Jewish. It was November 1938, shortly after the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany. In the panic that followed, Meyer’s parents put him on a train to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, which wasn’t yet occupied. He would never see them again.