Gordon E. Moore was awarded the 2008 Medal of Honor at ceremonies attended by Hampton Roads IEEE section members, Kurt Clemente, Bill LaBelle, and Bill Clayton, in Quebec City.
Moore, co-founder and chairman of the board, emeritus, of Intel Corporation, is one of the pioneers of semiconductor and microprocessor technology. He is the namesake of Moore's Law, one of the guiding principles of the global semiconductor industry. Introduced in 1965, Moore's Law stipulated that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double each year for ten years. In 1975, he revised the theory, stating that the complexity of chips would double every two years. Moore's Law remains an industry guidepost today for a US$200 billion per year industry that feeds a trillion dollar a year electronics industry.
In addition to his engineering contributions, Moore is among those responsible for the formation of two of the semiconductor industry's best-known companies - Intel Corporation and Fairchild Semiconductor.
Dr. Moore was among a group of eight scientists and engineers that founded Fairchild in 1957, to develop and manufacture a diffused silicon transistor. As head of Fairchild's research and development department, Dr. Moore led the creation of the first family of integrated logic circuits. Capitalizing on the almost simultaneous inventions of the integrated circuit and the MOSFET (Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor), Fairchild became the leading producer of bipolar integrated logic circuits and was responsible for much of the device understanding for MOSFETs, which are used in most microprocessors.
To manufacture integrated circuit memories using the MOSFET transistor, Dr. Moore left Fairchild in 1968 with Robert Noyce to co-found Intel Corporation. Dr. Moore later led Intel from being simply a memory company to one focused on microprocessor development. Under his leadership, Intel has produced a number of products based on LSI technology, including the world's first microprocessor. The development of the microprocessor is considered among the most significant developments in all of technology, and Intel's success in this area has made it the largest semiconductor company in the world.
An IEEE Life Fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering, Dr. Moore has received numerous awards, recognitions and honors, including the IEEE Founders Medal, the U.S. National Medal of Technology and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. He most recently received the EE Times ACE Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, Dr. Moore and his wife created the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to focus on the environment, higher education and science and the San Francisco Bay Area. He holds a bachelors degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology.
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