Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), known as "the Mayor of Silicon Valley," was an American physicist and business leader. He helped start Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He also helped create the first monolithic integrated circuit, or microchip, made with silicon. This invention helped start the personal computer revolution and led to the name "Silicon Valley."

Noyce founded The Noyce School of Applied Computing at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, within the College of Engineering. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan gave him the National Medal of Technology. In 1989, he was added to the U.S. Business Hall of Fame, with President George H. W. Bush speaking at the event. In 1990, he received a Lifetime Achievement Medal along with Jack Kilby and John Bardeen during the bicentennial celebration of the Patent Act.

Early life

Robert Noyce was born on December 12, 1927, in Burlington, Iowa. He was the third of four sons of Rev. Ralph Brewster Noyce. His father graduated from Doane College, Oberlin College, and the Chicago Theological Seminary. He was also considered for a Rhodes Scholarship.

Noyce’s mother, Harriet May Norton, was the daughter of Rev. Milton J. Norton, a Congregational clergyman, and Louise Hill. She graduated from Oberlin College. Before marrying, she wanted to be a missionary. Journalist Tom Wolfe described her as "an intelligent woman with a strong will."

Noyce had three siblings: Donald Sterling Noyce, Gaylord Brewster Noyce, and Ralph Harold Noyce. His brother Donald became a well-respected professor and associate dean of undergraduate affairs at the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry. Later, Robert created the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize to honor excellence in undergraduate teaching at Berkeley. His brother Gaylord became a respected professor of practical theology and dean of students at Yale Divinity School. In 1961, while a young professor, Gaylord was arrested for participating in the Freedom Riders of the civil rights movement.

Noyce’s earliest childhood memory was beating his father at ping pong. He was surprised when his mother responded to his victory with a distracted comment: "Wasn’t that nice of Daddy to let you win?" At age five, Noyce felt upset by the idea of intentionally losing. He told his mother, "That’s not the game. If you’re going to play, play to win!"

At twelve years old, in the summer of 1940, Noyce and his brother built a small aircraft they used to fly from the roof of the Grinnell College stables. Later, he built a radio from scratch and motorized his sled by attaching a propeller and motor from an old washing machine to the back of it. His parents were both religious, but Noyce became an agnostic and less religious as he grew older.

Education

Noyce was born in Grinnell, Iowa. During high school, he showed talent in mathematics and science. He took a physics course for college freshmen while still in his senior year of high school. He graduated from Grinnell High School in 1945 and began attending Grinnell College that same fall. In 1947, he was the star diver on the Midwest Conference Championship swim team. While at Grinnell College, Noyce participated in singing, played the oboe, and acted in plays. During his junior year, he got into trouble for stealing a 25-pound pig from the Grinnell mayor's farm and roasting it at a school luau. The mayor wrote to Noyce's parents, explaining that stealing a domestic animal in Iowa is a serious crime that could result in a year in prison and a $1 fine. Noyce faced possible expulsion from college, but Grant Gale, his physics professor and college president, believed Noyce had valuable potential. They reached an agreement with the mayor so that Grinnell College would pay for the pig, and Noyce was suspended for one semester. He returned to college in February 1949. He graduated with honors in physics and mathematics in 1949 and earned a Phi Beta Kappa award, which recognizes outstanding academic achievement. His classmates also gave him the Brown Derby Prize, an honor for the student who achieved the best grades with the least effort.

While studying at Grinnell College, Noyce became interested in physics. He took a physics course taught by Professor Grant Gale. Gale had received two of the first transistors ever made by Bell Labs and showed them to his class. Noyce became very interested in the topic. Gale encouraged Noyce to apply for a physics doctoral program at MIT, which he did.

Noyce was known for his quick thinking, and his graduate school friends called him "Rapid Robert." He earned his doctorate in physics from MIT in 1953.

Career

After graduating from MIT in 1953, Noyce became a research engineer at the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia. He left in 1956 to join William Shockley, a co-inventor of the transistor and a Nobel Prize winner, at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California.

Noyce left the laboratory in 1958 with a group of eight people known as the "traitorous eight" because he disagreed with Shockley’s management style. He helped start the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. Sherman Fairchild said that Noyce’s strong and clear presentation of his vision was the reason he agreed to create the semiconductor division for the group.

Noyce played a key role in inventing the integrated circuit. After Jack Kilby created the first hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC) in 1958, Noyce independently developed a new type of integrated circuit, the monolithic integrated circuit (monolithic IC), in 1959. Noyce’s design was more practical than Kilby’s. Noyce’s chip was made of silicon, while Kilby’s was made of germanium. Noyce’s invention was the first monolithic integrated circuit chip. Unlike Kilby’s IC, which used external wires and could not be mass-produced, Noyce’s monolithic IC placed all components on a silicon chip and connected them with aluminum lines. The planar process, developed in 1959 by Jean Hoerni, formed the basis of Noyce’s monolithic IC. Hoerni’s planar process was based on silicon surface passivation and thermal oxidation methods developed by Mohamed Atalla in 1957.

In 1968, Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel after leaving Fairchild Semiconductor. Arthur Rock, who was on Intel’s board and a major investor, said that for Intel to succeed, it needed Noyce, Moore, and Andrew Grove in that order. Noyce was the visionary, Moore was the expert in technology, and Grove was the scientist who later became a manager. Noyce was the first CEO of Intel until 1975, when Moore took over. The relaxed culture at Intel was inspired by Noyce’s style at Fairchild Semiconductor. He treated employees like family, encouraging teamwork and rewarding collaboration. Noyce’s management style was described as "roll up your sleeves." He avoided luxury items like fancy cars, reserved parking, private jets, and elaborate offices. Instead, he promoted a simple, informal work environment where everyone contributed equally and no one received special benefits. By refusing typical executive perks, Noyce set an example for future Intel leaders.

At Intel, Noyce oversaw the development of the microprocessor concept by Ted Hoff and the design of the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004, by Federico Faggin. This was Noyce’s second major contribution to technology.

Personal life

In 1953, Noyce married Elizabeth Bottomley, who graduated from Tufts University in 1951. While living in Los Altos, California, they had four children: William B., Pendred, Priscilla, and Margaret. Elizabeth loved New England, so the family bought a summer home on the coast in Bremen, Maine, that was 50 acres large. Elizabeth and the children spent summers there. Robert visited during the summer but continued working at Intel. They divorced in 1974.

On November 27, 1974, Noyce married Ann Schmeltz Bowers. Bowers graduated from Cornell University and received an honorary doctorate from Santa Clara University, where she served on the board for nearly 20 years. She was the first director of personnel for Intel Corporation and the first vice president of human resources for Apple Inc. She was a founding member of the board and later led it for the Noyce Foundation, which was created in 1990. Bowers died on January 24, 2024, at the age of 86.

Noyce stayed active throughout his life. He enjoyed reading books by Hemingway, flying his own airplane, and participating in hang-gliding and scuba diving. Noyce believed that microelectronics would become more complex and advanced in the future. This led to the question of how society would use the technology. In his final interview, Noyce was asked what he would do if he were "emperor" of the United States. He said, among other things, "…make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level."

Noyce had a heart attack at home on June 3, 1990, when he was 62 years old. He later died at Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas.

Awards and honors

In July 1959, he applied for U.S. patent 2,981,877, titled "Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure," which describes a type of integrated circuit. This work was completed independently and was recorded only a few months after Jack Kilby made important discoveries about integrated circuits. For his role in inventing the integrated circuit and its major impact on the world, three U.S. presidents honored him.

Noyce received many awards and honors. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan gave him the National Medal of Technology. In 1989, he was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame by Junior Achievement during a formal ceremony where President George H. W. Bush spoke. In 1990, Noyce—along with Jack Kilby and John Bardeen, the inventor of the transistor—was given a "Lifetime Achievement Medal" during the 200th anniversary celebration of the Patent Act.

In 1966, Noyce was awarded the Stuart Ballantine Medal by the Franklin Institute. In 1978, he received the IEEE Medal of Honor for his work on the silicon integrated circuit, which is a key part of modern electronics. In 1979, he was given the National Medal of Science and the Faraday Medal. In 1980, he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1989, the National Academy of Engineering honored him with the Charles Stark Draper Prize.

In 1985, Noyce gave a speech to students at the School of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. A science building at his college, Grinnell College, is named in his honor. On December 12, 2011, Google created a special image, called a Google Doodle, to celebrate the 84th anniversary of Noyce’s birth.

In 2000, Jack Kilby received the Nobel Prize in Physics. During his speech, Kilby thanked a few people who helped make integrated circuits successful, and he mentioned Noyce three times.

Legacy

The Noyce Foundation was created in 1990 by his family. Its goal was to help improve math and science education for students in grades K-12. The foundation announced it would stop working in 2015.

In 2022, California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) created the Noyce School of Applied Computing in the College of Engineering. This was made possible by a $60 million donation from the Robert N. Noyce Trust.

In 1990, Congress passed the Robert Noyce National Math and Science Teachers Corps Act. This law allows up to 5,000 scholarships each year to help people earn teaching degrees. These scholarships are given to colleges and universities that apply through the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. Students who receive these scholarships must be majoring in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). They also agree to teach science or math in high-need school districts for at least two years for every year they receive a scholarship. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) works with the National Science Foundation to share information about ways to attract, train, and keep new K-12 STEM teachers.

Patents

Noyce was awarded 15 patents. Patents are listed in the order they were issued, not the order they were filed.

• U.S. patent 2,875,141 Method and apparatus for forming semiconductor structures, filed August 1954, issued February 1959, assigned to Philco Corporation
• U.S. patent 2,929,753 Transistor structure and method, filed April 1957, issued March 1960, assigned to Beckmann Instruments
• U.S. patent 2,959,681 Semiconductor scanning device, filed June 1959, issued November 1960, assigned to Fairchild Semiconductor
• U.S. patent 2,968,750 Transistor structure and method of making the same, filed March 1957, issued January 1961, assigned to Clevite Corporation
• U.S. patent 2,971,139 Semiconductor switching device, filed June 1959, issued February 1961, assigned to Fairchild Semiconductor
• U.S. patent 2,981,877 Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure, filed July 1959, issued April 1961, assigned to Fairchild Semiconductor
• U.S. patent 3,010,033 Field effect transistor, filed January 1958, issued November 1961, assigned to Clevite Corporation
• U.S. patent 3,098,160 Field controlled avalanche semiconductive device, filed February 1958, issued July 1963, assigned to Clevite Corporation
• U.S. patent 3,108,359 Method for fabricating transistors, filed June 1959, issued October 1963, assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.
• U.S. patent 3,111,590 Transistor structure controlled by an avalanche barrier, filed June 1958, issued November 1963, assigned to Clevite Corporation
• U.S. patent 3,140,206 Method of making a transistor structure (coinventor William Shockley), filed April 1957, issued July 1964, assigned to Clevite Corporation
• U.S. patent 3,150,299 Semiconductor circuit complex having isolation means, filed September 1959, issued September 1964, assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.
• U.S. patent 3,183,129 Method of forming a semiconductor, filed July 1963, issued May 1965, assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.
• U.S. patent 3,199,002 Solid state circuit with crossing leads, filed April 1961, issued August 1965, assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.
• U.S. patent 3,325,787 Trainable system, filed October 1964, issued June 1967, assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.

Note: In 1960, Clevite Corporation purchased Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, which was a part of Beckman Instruments, for whom Noyce worked.