Intel co-founder and former chairman Gordon E. Moore died Saturday at his home in Hawaii. He is 94 years old. Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation confirmed his death. However, they did not provide details of his death, according to the New York Times.
Moore’s predictions of the exponential growth of computer chip technology in the 1960s ushered in the era of high technology. The California semiconductor chipmaker that gave Silicon Valley its name has achieved vast industrial dominance previously held by the giant railroads or America’s steel industry, according to a New York Times report.
Moore has always referred to himself as an “opportunity entrepreneur” because he always wanted to be a teacher but never could. He became a billionaire with his first $500 investment in the nascent microchip industry, which helped turn electronics into one of the world’s largest industries.
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Moore, along with his wife Betty Moore contributed immensely to philanthropy. The duo founded the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2001 and donated 175 million Intel shares in the process. They made the greatest single gift to a university at the time in 2001, giving $600 million to the California Institute of Technology.
Gordon Moore and Intel
Moore and his longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. Prior to taking office as president in 1975, Moore was executive vice president. Moore was appointed board chairman and CEO in 1979, positions he maintained until 1987 when he resigned from the CEO role but retained the chairmanship, the Intel newsroom informed. Significantly, by the 1990s, Intel had microprocessors in 80 per cent of the computers produced globally, making it the most prosperous semiconductor business in history.
