Herbert Kroemer (German: [ˈhɛʁbɛʁt ˈkʁøːmɐ] ⓘ; August 25, 1928 – March 8, 2024) was a German-American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for "developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics".

Born to a working-class family in Weimar, Germany, Kroemer excelled in physics at school, letting him advance faster than his peers in the subject.

[4] Kroemer worked in a number of research laboratories in Germany and the United States and taught electrical engineering at the University of Colorado from 1968 to 1976.

Kroemer always preferred to work on problems that are ahead of mainstream technology, inventing the drift transistor in the 1950s and being the first to point out that advantages could be gained in various semiconductor devices by incorporating heterojunctions.

Kroemer became an early pioneer in molecular beam epitaxy, concentrating on applying the technology to untried new materials.