US scientist and inventor,
with Jack Kilby, of the integrated circuit (chip), which revolutionized
the computer and electronics industries in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1968
he and six colleagues founded Intel Corporation, which became one of the
USA's leading semiconductor manufacturers.
Noyce was awarded a patent for the integrated circuit 1959. In 1961 he
founded his first company, Fairchild Camera and Instruments Corporation,
around which Silicon Valley was to grow. The company was the first in
the world to understand and exploit the commercial potential of the integrated
circuit. It quickly became the basis for such products as the personal
computer, the pocket calculator, and the programmable microwave oven.
At the time of his death, he was president of Sematech Incorporated, a
government-industry research consortium created to help US firms regain
a lead in semiconductor technology that they had lost to Japanese manufacturers. |