Gordon Earle Moore was born on 3rd January 1929 in San Francisco in California and became a billionaire by co-founding the Intel Corporation. He is now the Chairman Emeritus of the company and he also created “Moore’s Law” which was published on 19th April 1965 in Electronic Magazine.
Moore grew up in Pescadero and achieved a degree in Chemistry from the University of California in Berkeley in 1950 and also got a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a minor in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. Before he went to Berkeley he studied at San Jose State University.
He began working at Beckman Instruments in the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division with William Shockley but left with eight other men and went on to create the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. These eight men were known as the “Traitorous Eight”.
Intel Corporation was co-founded in July 1968 by Moore and he worked as the Executive Vice President of the company up until 1975 when he became the President and the Chief Executive Officer. In April 1979 he became the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the Chief Executive Officer up until April 1987 when he became the Chairman of the Board. He became the Chairman Emeritus in 1997.
He is married to his wife Betty who he met during his time at San Jose State University. Together they donated $600 million to Caltech in 2001 which is the largest amount of money ever to be donated to an institute of higher education. The library at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University is now named after him and his wife along with the Moore Laboratories building at Caltech which has dedicated to them in 1996.
On 6th December 2007 they donated a further $200 million to Caltech and to the University of California to help them build the world’s biggest optical telescope. This telescope will have a mirror 30 metres across which is three times as big as the world’s current largest telescope.
From 1994 to 2000, Moore was chairman of the board of trustees for Caltech, and he is still a trustee today. In 2003 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He and his wife fund and support the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation which has the aim of helping to develop projects that will benefit the quality of life for future generations.