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Robert Noyce
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Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. He is also credited (along with Jack Kilby) with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip. While Kilby's invention was 6 months earlier, he did not share his finding publicly, and neither man rejected the title of co-inventor.
e was born in Burlington, Iowa to Ralf and Harriet Noyce.
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Encyclopedia
Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. He is also credited (along with Jack Kilby) with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip. While Kilby's invention was 6 months earlier, he did not share his finding publicly, and neither man rejected the title of co-inventor.
Biography
Noyce was born in Burlington, Iowa to Ralf and Harriet Noyce. He graduated with a BA in physics from Grinnell College in 1949 and a Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953.
While a student at Grinnell College, Noyce stole a pig from a nearby farmer for a college luau and then slaughtered it in Clark Hall. Confessing to the prank and offering to pay for the pig nearly earned him expulsion, if not for the intervention of Grant O. Gale, a physics professor at the time.
He joined William Shockley at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments, but left with the "Traitorous Eight" to create the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation.
Noyce and Gordon E. Moore (a chemist and physicist) founded Intel in 1968 when they left Fairchild Semiconductor. It is widely known that Noyce was disliked by one-time Intel CEO Andy Grove, who became the company's president in 1979. Grove is notorious for his directness in finding fault. He thought Noyce's "nice guy" attitude irritating and felt it was ineffectual.
Intel's headquarters building, the Robert Noyce Building, in Santa Clara, California is named in his honor, as is the Robert N. Noyce '49 Science Center, which houses the science division of Grinnell College, as is the conference room of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico .
Noyce was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1978 "for his contributions to the silicon integrated circuit, a cornerstone of modern electronics."
In his last interview , Noyce was asked what he would do if
he were “emperor” of the United States. He said that he would, among
other things, “make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish
in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest,
as well as at the graduate school level.”
Noyce died from heart failure in 1990, aged 62,after years of smoking.
Legacy
The was founded in 1991 by his family. The foundation is dedicated to improving public education in mathematics and science in grades K-12.
Further reading
- Berlin, Leslie, The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, Oxford University Press (2005) ISBN 978-0195163438 ()
Robert Noyce was the subject of the piece "Two Young Men Who Went West" in Tom Wolfe's book Hooking Up, a collection of essays and short stories published in 2000.
Tom Wolfe's original piece on Robert Noyce was entitled "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce" and was published in Esquire Magazine in the December 1983 issue, pages 346 to 374. See link below.
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