When Motorola research engineer Don Linder was told on December 4, 1972, that he had eight weeks to develop the first handheld wireless phone, he was unfazed. Linder had worked on numerous crash development programs during his seven years at Motorola. Linder lead a team of more than a dozen engineers to develop the DynaTAC, the first mobile wireless phone, not just before the scheduled FCC hearings in May 1973 to decide if AT&T would get a monopoly for the new cellular spectrum, but by March, so he could take his annual skiing trip with his wife.

Linder was born August 17, 1943, in Osceola and raised in Centerville, both small towns in Iowa. His father was an engineer for the local electric utility with an interest in radio, and father and son built "stuff" in their basement. In 1965, Linder graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He later earned his master’s from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1979. Thanks to the success of the manned space program, the country was science crazy. Linder received seven different job offers before accepting one in Motorola's Applied Research division.

For five years before Cooper knocked on his engineer's bench, Linder had been designing frequency synthesizers, a method to generate multiple frequencies electronically from a single crystal, critical to developing smaller, lighter radio phones.

When Linder got the handheld assignment, the frequency synthesizer was just one of a dozen components he and his team had to shrink to fit into a handheld portable. Under Linder's leadership, the team designed and built two DynaTAC portable phones measuring 1-7/8 inches wide, 3-1/2 inches deep, 9-inches tall (not including the antenna), and weighing 45-ounces. Each accessed 380 duplex channels thanks to Linder's frequency synthesizer, and the rechargeable nickel cadmium battery was good for 36 minutes talking and 12 hours in standby.

Linder continued working on Motorola's cell phones. In 1987, he was named vice president of the technical staff, then director of the Corporate Applied Research Labs in 1990. Linder joined the Cellular Subscriber Sector of Motorola in 1994, to found a research lab, which developed several generations of custom processors for CDMA digital signals, voice recognition technology for phone dialing, new product concepts that led to the first speakerphone in a portable, the use of GPS for cellular location and the physical design for Motorola's RAZR phone.

Linder retired in 2001 as vice president and director of Motorola's cellular subscriber sector research lab. He has been awarded 13 patents, is a member of Motorola's Science Advisory Board, and has received the Motorola Dan Noble Fellow award and the Motorola Distinguished Innovator award. Last year, Linder, Marty Cooper and the cell phone development team were awarded the Great Moments Engineering Award from GlobalSpec.