Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 to June 3, 1990), nicknamed the Mayor of Silicon Valley, was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He was credited with the realization of the first monolithic integrated circuit, or microchip, made with silicon, which fueled the personal computer revolution and gave Silicon Valley its name. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Technology, and in 1990 he received a Lifetime Achievement Medal alongside Jack Kilby and John Bardeen during the bicentennial celebration of the Patent Act.
Facts
AwardCharles Stark Draper Prize 1 AwardNational Inventors Hall of Fame 1 AwardHarry H. Goode Memorial Award 1 AwardFellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1 AwardIEEE Cledo Brunetti Award 1 AwardNational Medal of Science 1 AwardStuart Ballantine Medal 1 AwardNational Medal of Technology and Innovation 1 FAQs
Did Robert Noyce or Jack Kilby invent the integrated circuit?
Noyce and Kilby each conceived the integrated circuit independently in the late 1950s.
Both men are credited, because they reached the idea separately. In the late 1950s, Noyce at Fairchild and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently conceived the idea of putting an entire circuit on a single piece of solid material. Noyce built on Jean Hoerni's process of applying a layer of silicon oxide on top of transistors and advanced it further. Both Texas Instruments and Fairchild filed patent applications, and Fairchild was granted the patent for the planar process.
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Sources
1. Wikidata: Robert Noyce
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