Gordon Moore

Gordon Earle Moore (b. January 3, 1929 in San Francisco, California) is the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation and the author of Moore's Law (published in an article 19 April 1965 in Electronics Magazine).

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Moore was born in San Francisco, California, but his family lived in nearby Pescadero where he grew up. He received a B.S. 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. Prior to studying at Berkeley, he spent his freshman and sophomore years at San José State University, where he met his future wife Betty.

He joined Caltech alumnus William Shockley at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments, but left with the "Traitorous Eight", when Sherman Fairchild agreed to back them and created the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation.

Moore set off his first boom in Silicon Valley two decades before pioneering the design of the integrated circuit. He co-founded Intel Corporation in July of 1968, serving as Executive Vice President until 1975 when he became President and Chief Executive Officer. In April 1979, Dr. Moore became Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, holding that position until April 1987, when he became Chairman of the Board. He was named Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation in 1997.

In 2001, Moore and his wife donated $600 million to Caltech, the largest gift ever to an institution of higher education. He said that he wants the gift to be used to keep Caltech at the forefront of research and technology. Moore was chairman of Caltech's board of trustees from 1994 to 2000, and continues as a trustee today. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The library at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge is named after him and his wife Betty, as is the Moore Laboratories building (dedicated 1996) at Caltech.

With his wife he endowed the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

On December 6, 2007, Gordon Moore and his wife donated $200 million to Caltech and the University of California for the construction of the world's largest optical telescope. The telescope will have a mirror 30 meters across. This is nearly three times the size of the current record holder, Large Binocular Telescope.

See also

• List of billionaires
• List of wealthiest foundations