Kilby, Jack S.

Kilby, Jack S. (1923-2005), American electrical engineer, inventor, and cowinner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics. Kilby was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for his invention of the integrated circuit—the forerunner of the computer microchip. The other half of the award was shared by German-born American physicist Herbert Kroemer and Russian physicist Zhores I. Alferov for their development of improved semiconductors. The three scientists were collectively honored for their fundamental work in information and communication technology.

Jack St. Clair Kilby was born in Jefferson City, Missouri. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 1947. He earned his master’s degree in 1950 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1958 to 1970 he worked at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas, after which he spent several years as an independent inventor. He later returned to the company before officially retiring in 1983, although he continued to work as a consultant. From 1978 to 1984 he taught electrical engineering at Texas A&M University.

As a newly hired engineer at Texas Instruments in the summer of 1958, Kilby decided to pursue a key problem in electronics at the time: the lack of an effective, reliable way of combining components to make a miniature electronic circuit. The invention of the transistor in 1948 had marked a huge improvement over the bulky vacuum tubes that had previously been the workhorses of radios and other electronic devices. However, combining multiple transistors and other devices in a miniature electric circuit was a labor-intensive, time-consuming, and failure-prone process of soldering together thousands of different components. Kilby’s idea was to combine all the necessary structures for a circuit on a single surface.

Working with the semiconducting material germanium, Kilby succeeded in etching transistors, resistors, and other electrical components on a single wafer of material less than half the size of a paper clip. Kilby painted the shapes of the desired components on the germanium with wax, then used acid to eat away the extraneous, unprotected germanium. The first successful laboratory demonstration of Kilby’s integrated circuit took place in September 1958.

Shortly after Kilby’s device was patented another integrated circuit, made from silicon, was patented by American engineer Robert Noyce. Noyce’s design became the industry standard, although Kilby was recognized as the first to produce a working model. Thereafter, Kilby shared credit as the coinventor of the integrated circuit with Noyce, who went on to cofound the computer-chip maker Intel Corporation.

The invention of the integrated circuit was a milestone in the computer age. Refinements from other scientists soon produced the first microprocessors, a technological innovation that eventually shrank powerful computers from room-sized machines to desktop devices. The modern descendents of Kilby’s first integrated circuits—tiny chips that now can contain more than 1 billion transistors—provide processing power not only for computers but also for medical equipment, automobiles, household appliances, and many other devices.

Kilby, who also coinvented the handheld calculator and the thermal printer, was awarded more than 60 patents during his career. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Kilby’s distinctions included the National Medal of Science, which he received in a White House ceremony in 1970. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1982.