Terril Yue Jones in the Los Angeles Times:
Jack Kilby, the self-effacing 6-foot-6 engineer whose invention of the integrated circuit won him the Nobel Prize and launched the digital revolution, has died. He was 81.
Kilby died Monday after a brief battle with cancer, according to Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc., where Kilby was a young engineer when he pioneered the microchip more than 45 years ago.
“In my opinion, there are only a handful of people whose works have truly transformed the world and the way we live in it — Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and Jack Kilby,” said Texas Instrument Chairman Tom Engibous in a statement. “If there was ever a seminal invention that transformed not only our industry but our world, it was Jack’s invention of the first integrated circuit.”
While other engineers at Texas Instruments took vacations, Kilby worked alone through the summer of 1958 to develop the technological breakthrough that shrunk tons of electronic equipment to a tiny slice of silicon.
More here. [Thanks to Winfield J. Abbe.]