Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit ushered in the electronics age and made possible the microprocessor, has died after a battle with cancer.
Kilby, 81, died on Monday, said Texas Instruments Inc., where he worked for many years. Kilby is survived by two daughters, five granddaughters, and a son-in-law.
Before the integrated circuit, electronic devices relied on bulky and fragile circuitry, including glass vacuum tubes. Afterward, electronics could become increasingly more complex, reliable and efficient: powering everything from the iPod to the Internet.
During his first year at Texas Instruments, Kilby, using borrowed equipment, built the first integrated circuit into a single piece of semiconducting material half the size of a paper clip. Four years later in 1962, Texas Instruments won its first major integrated circuit contract, for the Minuteman missile.
Kilby later co-invented the hand-held electronic calculator. "TI was the only company that agreed to let me work on electronic component miniaturization more or less full time, and it turned out to be a great fit," Kilby wrote in an autobiography for the Nobel Committee in 2000, the year he won the prize for physics.
Today, integrated circuits are everywhere, from microwave ovens to Mars landers. The contributions of Kilby are hard to overstate, technology experts say. His 2000 Nobel citation said Kilby "laid the foundation of modern information technology."
