Robert Noyce
Robert Norton Noyce ( born December 12, 1927 in Burlington, Iowa, † June 3, 1990 in Austin, Texas), known in English The Mayor of Silicon Valley, The Mayor of Silicon Valley ', 1957 was a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel 1968. He was also a founding investor in 1969 from AMD. It also applies, in addition to Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit.
Life
His BA in physics from Grinnell College in 1949, he received his Ph. D. in 1953 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As a student at Grinnell College, Noyce stole from a nearby farm, a pig and killed it for a college luau. This incident led to Noyce was almost expelled. Only the intervention of a physics professor prevented this
After completing his doctorate at MIT, he took a job as a research engineer at the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at. He left Philco 1956 to work with William B. Shockley Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in the Beckman instrument. After internal disagreements he left in 1957 as one of the so-called Traitorous Eight, the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory and founded together with the other Traitorous Eight Fairchild Semiconductor.
In Fairchild Semiconductor succeeded Robert Noyce in 1959 to produce the first monolithically fabricated integrated circuit. The invention was based mainly on the Jean Hoerni ( Fairchild ) developed planar, with the first plurality of transistors, diodes and resistors on a silicon substrate ( "chip" ) were placed. Photolithographic processes and diffusion processes have already been used for the manufacture, Fairchild Semiconductor had recently developed for the production of the first modern diffusion in planar bipolar transistor. The invention of the integrated circuit is not attributed Noyce alone. Also, Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) developed at this time regardless of Fairchild a similar idea, see Integrated circuits in microelectronics products. The point of Noyce 's invention was the complete manufacturing of the components including wiring on a substrate; In contrast to the approach of Kilby, still used for the connection wires of the components. However, Texas Instruments won after a long-running legal dispute with Fairchild, which involved, among other things resulting from the inventions licenses.
In 1968 he left Fairchild Semiconductor and founded with Gordon E. Moore, the company Intel.
" For leadership in research, development and manufacture of semiconductor devices " ( "For leadership in research development and manufacture of semiconductor devices " ) he received the 1966 IEEE Fellow Award. Other awards included the IEEE Medal of Honor ( 1978), the Cledo Brunetti Award and the Stuart Ballantine Medal ( Franklin Institute, 1966 ) and the National Medal of Science ( 1979). The building of the headquarters of Intel in Santa Clara, California, is named after him (Robert Noyce Building ); as the building of the Science Department of the Grinnell College ( Robert N. Noyce '49 Science Center ).
Noyce died in 1990 at the age of 62 of heart failure. He left the Noyce Foundation (German, Noyce Foundation '). This is currently run by his daughter Penny Noyce, her husband Leo Liu and her son Owen Liu. Jack Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the integrated circuit in 2000. This honor Noyce was denied because the price is not awarded posthumously.
In his honor, awarded the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal the.