Google Doodle Honors ‘Mayor of Silicon Valley’ Robert Noyce

Google celebrated what would have been the 84th birthday of the late Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, with an electronics-themed Google Doodle on Monday, Dec. 12.

Also known as the “Mayor of Silicon Valley,” Noyce co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corporation in 1957 and 1968, respectively.

The Doodle comes with a no-frills look, a lot like the simplicity the man himself embraced in his life. Google honors Noyce with a Doodle that puts the Google logo atop the golden microchip.

Born in 1927, Noyce finished school in 1945 from Grinnell High School and received a baccalaureate degree in physics and mathematics from Grinnell in 1949. He went on to get his Ph.D in Physics from MIT.

After graduating from MIT in 1953, he worked as a research engineer at the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia, Pa., and left to join Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, Calif. in 1956.

However, Noyce left the company in 1957 with the Traitorous Eight due to differences of opinion arising from Shockley's autocratic managerial style and his practice of interference in the research process. The eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory formed Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. In 1968, Noyce and Gordon Moore co-founded Intel.

Noyce died on June 3, 1990, from a heart attack. During that time he was the president and CEO of SEMATECH. SEMATECH is a nonprofit consortium that performs research and development to advance chip manufacturing.