Gordon Earle Moore (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman, co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation, and the author of Moore's law.[2][3][4][5][6] As of January 2015, his net worth is $6.7 billion.[7]

Moore was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in nearby Pescadero. He attended Sequoia High School in Redwood City. Initially he went to San Jose State University.[8] After two years he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1950.[9]

In September, 1950 Moore matriculated at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).[10] Moore received a PhD[11] in chemistry and minor in physics from Caltech in 1954.[9][12] Moore conducted postdoctoral research at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University from 1953 to 1956.[9]

Moore met his future wife, Betty Irene Whitaker, while attending San Jose State University.[10] Gordon and Betty were married September 9, 1950,[13] and left the next day to move to the California Institute of Technology. The couple have two sons Kenneth and Steven.[14]

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.[15][16]

In 1965, Gordon E. Moore was working as the director of research and development (R&D) at Fairchild Semiconductor. He was asked by Electronics Magazine to predict what was going to 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)[17] 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.[18]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.[16][2]

In July 1968, Robert Noyce and Moore founded NM Electronics which later became Intel Corporation.[19][20] Moore served as Executive Vice President until 1975 when he became President. In April 1979, 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.[21] Under Noyce, Moore, and later Andrew Grove, Intel has pioneered new technologies in the areas of computer memory, integrated circuits and microprocessor design.[20]

Moore has been a member of the Board of Directors of Gilead Sciences since 1996, after serving as a member of the company's Business Advisory Board from 1991 until 1996.[22]

In 2000 Betty and Gordon Moore 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.[23]

The foundation gives extensively in the area of environmental conservation, supporting major projects in the Andes-Amazon Basin and the San Francisco Bay area, among others.[24] 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 His Royal Highness Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld for their outstanding contributions to nature conservation.[25]

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Gordon Moore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia