Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
Early life and education
Gordon Moore was born in 1929 as the second son of Walter Harold Moore (a county sheriff stationed in San Mateo County) and Florence Almira "Mira" Williamson (a homemaker). When Moore started school in 1935, the faculty noted his introverted personality. His father accepted a promotion to deputy sheriff in 1938 and moved the family to Redwood City, California. In 1940, Moore received a chemistry set as a Christmas gift, which inspired him to become a chemist. From 1942 to 1946, Moore studied at Sequoia High School, where he was involved in athletic activities. From 1946 to 1947, Moore attended San José State College (now San José State University), studying chemistry. He transferred to University of California, Berkeley in 1948, taking courses from Glenn Seaborg, Melvin Calvin, and William Giauque. He graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry.
In September 1950, Moore enrolled at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech"), where he would ultimately receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1954. Moore conducted postdoctoral research at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University from 1953 to 1956.
Scientific career
Fairchild Semiconductor Laboratory
Moore joined MIT and 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's law
In 1965, Moore was working as the director of research and development (R&D) at Fairchild Semiconductor. He was asked by Electronics Magazine to predict what he thought might happen in the semiconductor components industry over the next ten years. In an article published on April 19, 1965, Moore observed that the number of components (transistors, resistors, diodes, or capacitors) in a dense integrated circuit had doubled approximately every year and speculated that it would continue to do so for at least the next ten years. In 1975, he revised the forecast rate to approximately every two years. Carver Mead popularized the phrase "Moore's law". The prediction has become a target for miniaturization in the semiconductor industry and has had widespread impact in many areas of technological change.
Intel Corporation
In July 1968, Robert Noyce and Moore founded NM Electronics, which later became Intel Corporation. Moore served as executive vice president until 1975 when he became president. In April 1979, Moore became chairman and chief executive officer, holding that position until April 1987, when he became chairman. He was named chairman emeritus in 1997. Under Noyce, Moore, and later Andrew Grove, Intel pioneered new technologies for computer memory, integrated circuits, and microprocessor design. On April 11, 2022, Intel renamed its main Oregon site, the Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, as 'Gordon Moore Park', and the building formerly known as RA4, as 'Moore Center', after Gordon Moore.
Philanthropy
As of February 2023, Moore's net worth was reported to be $7 billion.
In 2000, Moore and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, with a gift worth about $5 billion. Through the foundation, they initially targeted environmental conservation, science, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The foundation gives extensively in the area of environmental conservation, supporting major projects in the Andes–Amazon Basin, including Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Suriname, as well as the San Francisco Bay area. Moore was a director of Conservation International for some years. In 2002, he and Conservation International senior vice president Claude Gascon received the Order of the Golden Ark from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for their outstanding contributions to nature conservation.
Moore was a member of Caltech's board of trustees from 1983, chairing it from 1993 to 2000, and was a life trustee at the time of his death. In 2001, Moore and his wife donated $600 million to Caltech, at the time the largest gift ever to an institution of higher education. He said he wanted the gift to be used to keep Caltech at the forefront of research and technology.
