In Memoriam: Gordon Moore, 1929 - 2023
upstart writes:
In Memoriam: Gordon Moore, 1929 - 2023:
With great sadness, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announces the passing of our founder, Gordon Moore.
With his characteristic humility and word economy, Gordon Moore once wrote "my career as an entrepreneur happened quite by accident." A brilliant scientist, business leader and philanthropist, Gordon co-founded and led two pioneering technology enterprises, Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, and, with his wife, Betty, created one of the largest private grantmaking foundations in the U.S., the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
He may argue that his career as an entrepreneur happened by accident, but his world-changing contributions did not. Never one to trumpet his own accomplishments, Gordon wasn't able to dissuade others from celebrating his wide and long-reaching legacy: the revolutionary technologies and breakthroughs, a long and generous history of philanthropy, and the very culture of experimentation, invention and relentless progress that now defines Silicon Valley.
It took decades for Gordon to be able to speak with a straight face of his eponymous "Moore's Law," the prophetic 1965 observation that became a cornerstone principle of innovation and driving force for the exponential pace of technological progress in the modern world. Gordon later observed that he had looked it up and was pleasantly surprised to find more references on the internet to "Moore's Law" than to "Murphy's Law."
Dubbed a "quiet revolutionary" by his biographers, Gordon always worked in the absence of any pretense or desire for recognition, driven instead by an exceptional curiosity, generosity and unassuming commitment to hard work.
Gordon was always a visionary. Even at the start of his career, he keenly recognized the impact that the technologies he was developing would have on the world. And at an industry event in 1979, he told an Intel audience: "We are bringing about the next great revolution in the history of mankind - the transition to the electronic age." (Moore's Law, Thackray, Brock and Jones).
Although Gordon was reluctant to spotlight his own contributions, his biographers have been less reticent about attribution. Gordon is simply, they argue, "the most important thinker and doer in the story of silicon electronics."
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