This is the last post in our continuation of The Maker of Moore’s Law series. (read part 1, part 2, or part 3)
source: kurzweilai.net
In our last post, we left off telling about Moore’s new venture at Intel and their first huge success, producing memory chips on a large scale.
Moore continues to achieve astounding things, and his work continues to greatly impact the world. Serving as president of Intel in the late 1970’s, and then chief executive officer for over a decade, Moore has been an exemplary leader. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1990, and later the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Along with his wife Betty, Gordon established a $5B foundation to conserve the environment (primarily in the Amazon and San Francisco Bay area) and explore science. Their budget is closer to $25M per year, and awards grants for unique projects that are expected to have high-impact and measurable results within a distinct time frame.
If that weren’t enough, Gordon and his wife have since donated nearly $1B to Caltech in order to keep it at the cutting edge of research and development, and to construct the world’s 2nd largest optical telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii. The telescope project has been postponed due to controversy over the desired location of construction on a sacred site in Hawaii. Their building permits were revoked when the State Supreme Court ruled that the board did not follow due process when acquiring permits.
Here’s an artist’s rendering of the thirty meter telescope:
source: wikipedia.org
The foundation also contributed $100M to the University of California, Davis, to develop a nursing school. Recently, in 2009 both Gordon and Betty received the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.
Moore has an active personal life in the outdoors. He loves to fish and travels the world chasing everything from marlin to trout. In an interesting side-note, Gordon was the first human to have his genome fully sequenced.
source: wikipedia.org