C. Sheldon Roberts (October 27, 1926 – June 6, 2014) was an American semiconductor pioneer, and member of the "

traitorous eight The traitorous eight was a group of eight employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor. William Shockley had in 1956 recruited a group of young Ph.D. graduates with the goal to develop and produce ...

" who founded Silicon Valley.

Biography

Roberts earned a Bachelor's degree in

metallurgical engineering Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

from

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

in 1948, and a Master's degree in 1949 and Ph.D. in 1952, from MIT. He then worked in research at the

Naval Research Lab The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...

and the

Dow Chemical Company The Dow Chemical Company, officially Dow Inc., is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company is among the three largest chemical producers in the world. Dow manufactures plastic ...

. He joined the seminal Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments in Mountain View, California, but left the company along with other members of the

with the backing of

Sherman Fairchild Sherman Mills Fairchild (April 7, 1896 – March 28, 1971) was an American businessman and investor. He founded over 70 companies, including Fairchild Aircraft (Fairchild Aviation Corporation), Fairchild Industries, and Fairchild Camera and Inst ...

to form the influential

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...

corporation. He later founded

Amelco Teledyne Technologies Incorporated is an American industrial conglomerate. It was founded in 1960, as Teledyne, Inc., by Henry Singleton and George Kozmetsky. From August 1996 to November 1999, Teledyne existed as part of the conglomerate Al ...

(known now as Teledyne) with traitorous eight alumni

Jean Hoerni Jean Amédée Hoerni (September 26, 1924 – January 12, 1997) was a Swiss-American engineer. He was a silicon transistor pioneer, and a member of the " traitorous eight". He developed the planar process, an important technology for reliably fa ...

and Jay Last.

References

External links

The Fairchild Chronicles
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, Sheldon 1926 births 2014 deaths American metallurgists Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Silicon Valley people Dow Chemical Company employees Scientists at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory