Les Besser (born 1936[1]) is an American electronics engineer, an expert in microwave technology.
He is the founder (1973) of Compact Software, the first commercially successful microwave computer-aided design (CAD) company, which commercialize his program COMPACT (Computerized Optimization of Microwave Passive and Active CircuiTs).
After leaving HP, he joined the newly formed microwave division of Fairchild Semiconductor, where he authored his first-generation program, SPEEDY,[5] Besser later converted another program, originally written for his graduate thesis work,[citation needed] to run on a commercial time-share system and launched a part-time business, Compact Engineering (later renamed Compact Software).
Besser submitted the description of COMPACT to IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory in 1972, but it was initially rejected, and was not accepted until after the addition of a large amount of mathematics into it.
[3] Besser has received numerous international recognitions and awards and was listed in the Marquis "Who Is Who in American Colleges and Universities" in 1966 and "Who Is Who in the World" in 1995.