Elizabeth Noyce (' Bottomley; October 7, 1930 – September 18, 1996) was an American philanthropist, and former wife of

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 ...

general manager and a founder of

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series ...

, Robert Noyce.

Biography

Noyce was born Elizabeth Bottomley in

Auburn, Massachusetts Auburn is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 16,889 at the 2020 census. History The Auburn area was first settled in 1714 as of today outer parts of Worcester, Sutton, Leicester and Oxford, Massachusett ...

, United States, the daughter of Frank Bottomley and Helen McLaren. She was a 1951 graduate of

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

, located in the Boston suburb of Medford. In the early 1950s,

Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He is also credited wit ...

was working on his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

at MIT, in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

near Boston. The couple married in 1953, the year Robert received his PhD. Several years later the Noyces moved to California, where

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...

William Shockley William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly ...

had started Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View in 1956. Robert was one 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 left Shockley in 1957 and started

. He and

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

' Jack Kilby are credited with inventing the

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

. In 1968, Noyce and Gordon Moore started

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

in Mountain View. Intel developed the first commercially available dynamic RAM (i1103), EPROM (i1702), and commercially available

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

(i4004), becoming a huge financial success. During this time, the couple lived in Los Altos. They had four children: William B., Pendred, Priscilla, and Margaret. Elizabeth loved

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

, so the family acquired a 50-acre coastal summer home in Bremen, Maine. She and the children would summer there. Robert would visit during breaks from Intel. He also started an extramarital affair with a 28-year-old Intel mask designer, Barbara Maness, conducted as an "open secret" at Intel. Elizabeth learned of it and the marriage ended in divorce in 1975. Under

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

's community property law she received half of the couple's assets. Robert later married Ann Bowers, Intel's head of personnel. Elizabeth then took up full residence in Bremen. She became the area's leading philanthropist and art collector. Among other major gifts, she established the

Libra Foundation The Libra Foundation is among the largest charitable organizations in the state of Maine. Major projects include Pineland Farms Pineland Farms is a 5,000-acre farm and recreational property in the eastern part of New Gloucester, Maine. It is par ...

. Noyce, a smoker, developed

emphysema Emphysema, or pulmonary emphysema, is a lower respiratory tract disease, characterised by air-filled spaces ( pneumatoses) in the lungs, that can vary in size and may be very large. The spaces are caused by the breakdown of the walls of the alve ...

, and died from a heart attack on September 18, 1996, aged 65, at her home.

References

External links

Sarasota Herald-Tribune 27 September 1996Eugene Register-Guard 27 September 1996State Bids Goodbye to 'Best Friend': Elizabeth Noyce is praised for her Generosity to Maine at a Portland Memorial Service, John Richardson Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald (ME), September 24, 1996. About 1200 people, including school children and four Maine governors, attended. Governor Angus King spoke.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Noyce, Elizabeth 1930 births 1996 deaths People from Auburn, Massachusetts Tufts University alumni Deaths from emphysema Philanthropists from Maine People from Bremen, Maine 20th-century American philanthropists