Gordon Earle Moore is an American engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who co-founded two of the most influential technology companies in the world: Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corporation. He was born on January 3, 1929, in San Francisco, California. Moore is best known for Moore's Law, which has been a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry since its formulation in 1965.
Moore earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950, and a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1954. After completing his education, Moore joined the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, where he worked with William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor.
In 1957, Moore left Shockley Semiconductor along with seven colleagues, including Robert Noyce, to form Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. This group, known as the "Traitorous Eight," played a pivotal role in the development of the semiconductor industry. At Fairchild, Moore served as the Director of Research and Development and was instrumental in the development of the planar process, a critical innovation that enabled the mass production of integrated circuits.
In 1965, Moore published a paper in Electronics Magazine in which he made a prediction that the number of components on an integrated circuit would double approximately every two years, leading to exponential growth in computing power. This observation, which became known as Moore's Law, has proven remarkably accurate and has driven innovation in the semiconductor industry for decades.
In 1968, Moore co-founded Intel Corporation with Robert Noyce. As Executive Vice President, Moore played a key role in the development of early semiconductor products, such as dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and microprocessors. Moore succeeded Noyce as Intel's CEO in 1975 and held the position until 1987. Under Moore's leadership, Intel became a global technology leader and one of the world's largest semiconductor companies.
Moore's achievements have been widely recognized, and he has received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1990 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. After retiring from Intel, Moore focused on philanthropy, establishing the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which supports environmental conservation, scientific research, and patient care initiatives.
Gordon Moore's impact on the technology industry is immense, and his contributions to the field of semiconductors have been a driving force behind the rapid advancements in computing and electronics over the past several decades.
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