Gordon Moore: The Chemist at the Center of the High Tech Revolution Dies at 94.

 

In 1965 when I was twelve years old, I learned basic electronics from a 600-page book published by the Amateur Radio Relay League--the ham radio operators.  The big book taught me both vacuum tube circuits and transistor circuits. Integrated circuits were not part of my basic course.  

Transistors were invented in 1948. The integrated circuit--transistors and diodes on a single silicon chip--was patented in 1959.  In 1964, the number of components on a single chip had risen to 120. The following year, while I pondered the mysteries of triode and pentode tubes along with NPN and PNP transistors, Gordon Moore published the bold prediction that the number of components on a microchip would double roughly every 18 months: Moore's Law. 

He was largely correct. I could not even count the quibbles about Moore's Law, but a single microchip can currently include billions of components.  Starting at 120 per chip in 1965, billions is a lot of doubling. 

In 1968, Gordon Moore was a co-founder of Intel Corporation. He was very much a part of making his own law come true decade after decade.  

I met Moore briefly in 2004 and again in 2005. I worked for the Science History Institute, which at the time was very much a museum and library of the history of Chemistry.  Moore was there because he was trained as a chemist and saw the high tech revolution very much as a chemical revolution.  

In 2005, Moore held the conference celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Moore's Law at the Science History Institute. Most of the speakers flew in from the other coast to Philadelphia.  Moore wanted the celebration to be connected to chemistry.  

But Moore's 2004 visit to the Institute is a story I have told and retold. At the time our library wanted to acquire the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library: 6,000 rare science books dating back almost to the invention of printing held privately by Neville. The founder and President of the Institute, Arnold Thackray, asked Moore to donate the money to acquire the books.  Because there was a competitive bid and not much time to close the deal, Moore wrote a personal check for $10 million in Thackray's office.

Not many people could write a check for $10 million, but Moore could and did and we got the collection.

During the 2005 Moore's Law Conference, Moore spoke about the early days of the high tech revolution and how microchips were everywhere in just 40 years.  His remarks gave credit to many people and was full of thanks for great colleagues.