Born on December 12, 1927, Robert Norton Noyce was a
scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur.
He is best known for co-inventing the integrated circuit with Jack Kilby. He was known as "the Mayor of Silicon Valley"
because of his contributions to the personal computer.
Education and Early
Career
Noyce started inventing at a young age. When he was 12, he and his brother built a
boy-sized aircraft which they used to fly from a roof. He also built a radio, motorized his sled,
and kept a scrapbook of plans to build many other things. Some of his entrepreneurial efforts included
snow shoveling, paper delivery, and flower shop deliveries.
Noyce attended Grinnell College and enjoyed physics. He was suspended for a semester for stealing
a farmer's pig for a luau. After
graduation and being rejected by the Air Force because he was color blind, he
decided to begin a doctoral program in physics at MIT. He obtained a research fellowship that
covered his tuition and paid him $122.50 per month.
His dissertation covered the topic of measuring the presence
of electrons at the surface of quartz and magnesium oxide. Noyce received research job offers at Bell
Labs ($7,500) and IBM ($7,300) but went to work at Philco, a manufacturer of
radios and TVs, for $6,900. After two
years he moved to Shockley Semiconductor in California.
Semiconductor Success
Noyce clashed with Shockley, his boss and one of the
inventors of the transistor. When he
lost out on recognition for his research on negative-resistance diodes, he and
seven other researchers known as the "traitorous eight" decided to form their
own company. Fairchild Semiconductor
Corporation was founded in September 1957.
Noyce developed seven patents within 18 months of forming the company. On April 25, 1960 he was granted a patent for
a "Semiconductor Device-and-Lead Structure", also known as an integrated
circuit.
In 1968, Noyce left Fairchild Semiconductor and founded a
new company with a friend, Gordon Moore.
The new company was incorporated as NM Electronics but later the name
was changed to Intel. Intel's first
product, introduced in May 1969, was the 3101 Schottky bipolar 64-bit static random
access memory (SRAM) chip. The company
manufactured the first single-chip microprocessor in 1971. Intel is still the largest producer of
semiconductor chips in the world.
Noyce came out of retirement in 1988 to run a semiconductor
manufacturing consortium called SEMATECH.
He died from heart failure on June 3, 1990.
Awards and Honors:
- Held 17 patents
- Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal
(1966)
- IEEE Medal of Honor (1978)
- National Medal of Science (1979)
- National Medal of Technology (1987)
- Inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame
(1989)
- Charles Stark Draper Award (1990)
- Lifetime Achievement Medal during bicentennial
of the Patent Act (1990)
- Google
Doodle (2011)
Resources:
Engology - Robert
Norton Noyce (deceased 1990)
The Great Idea Finder - Robert Noyce
History Computer - Biography of Robert
Noyce (1927-1990)
The New York Times - An
Inventor of the Microchip, Robert N. Noyce, Dies at 62
Wikipedia - Robert Noyce
| 
