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Jean Amédée Hoerni (September 26, 1924 – January 12, 1997) was a Swiss-born American engineer. He was a silicon transistor pioneer, and a member of the " traitorous eight". He developed the
planar process The planar process is a semiconductor device fabrication, manufacturing process used in the semiconductor industry to build individual components of a transistor, and in turn, connect those transistors together. It is the primary process by which ...
, an important technology for reliably fabricating and manufacturing
semiconductor devices A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronics, electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its co ...
, such as
transistors A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...
and
integrated circuits An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...
.


Biography

Hoerni was born on September 26, 1924, in
Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Switzerland. He received his B.S. in
Mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
from the
University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...
and two Ph.D.s in
physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
; one from the
University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...
and the other from the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
. In 1952, he moved to the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
to work at the
California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...
, where he became acquainted with
William Shockley William Bradford Shockley ( ; February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American solid-state physicist, electrical engineer, and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brat ...
, a physicist at
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
who was intimately involved with the creation of the
transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...
. A few years later, Shockley recruited Hoerni to work with him at the newly founded
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, later known as Shockley Transistor Corporation, was a pioneering semiconductor developer founded by William Shockley, and funded by Beckman Instruments, Inc., in 1955. It was the first high technology compan ...
division of
Beckman Instruments Beckman Coulter, Inc. is a Danaher Corporation company that develops, manufactures, and markets products relevant to biomedical testing. It operates in the industries of diagnostics under the brand name Beckman Coulter and life sciences under t ...
in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...
. But Shockley's strange behavior compelled the so-called "traitorous eight" (Hoerni,
Julius Blank Julius Blank (June 2, 1925 – September 17, 2011) was an American semiconductor pioneer. A member of the traitorous eight, he left Nobel-winning physicist William Shockley's company to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Early life and education B ...
, Victor Grinich, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last,
Gordon Moore Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors i ...
,
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 was also credited w ...
and Sheldon Roberts) to leave his laboratory and create the
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...
corporation. In 1955 Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derrick discovered and patented
surface passivation A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is ...
by silicon dioxide. Frosch and Derrick were able to manufacture the first silicon dioxide field effect transistors, the first transistors in which drain and source were adjacent at the surface. At Shockley Semiconductor, Shockley had circulated the preprint of their article in December 1956 to all his senior staff, including Jean Hoerni. Later, Hoerni attended a meeting where Atalla presented a paper about passivation based on the previous results at Bell Labs. The
planar process The planar process is a semiconductor device fabrication, manufacturing process used in the semiconductor industry to build individual components of a transistor, and in turn, connect those transistors together. It is the primary process by which ...
was invented by Jean Hoerni, with his first patent filed in May 1959, while working at
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...
. The planar process was critical in the invention of
Silicon Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid (sometimes considered a non-metal) and semiconductor. It is a membe ...
Integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...
by
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 was also credited w ...
. Noyce built on Hoerni's work with his conception of an integrated circuit, which added a layer of metal to the top of Hoerni's basic structure to connect different components, such as transistors,
capacitors In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term st ...
, or
resistors A resistor is a passive two-terminal electronic component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. In electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow, adjust signal levels, to divide voltages, bias active e ...
, located on the same piece of silicon. The planar process provided a powerful way of implementing an integrated circuit that was superior to earlier conceptions of the device. With Noyce,
Jack Kilby Jack St. Clair Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) was an American electrical engineer who took part, along with Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instrumen ...
from
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
is usually credited with the invention of the integrated circuit, but Kilby's IC was based on
germanium Germanium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid or a nonmetal in the carbon group that is chemically ...
. As it turns out, Silicon ICs have numerous advantages over germanium. The name "Silicon Valley" refers to this silicon."Jean Hoerni (American engineer)"
''Encyclopædia Britannicaonline''
Along with the "traitorous eight" alumni Jay Last and Sheldon Roberts, Hoerni founded Amelco (known now as
Teledyne 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 ...
) in 1961. In 1964, he founded Union Carbide Electronics, and in 1967, he founded
Intersil Intersil is an American semiconductor company headquartered in Milpitas, California. , Intersil is a subsidiary of Renesas. The previous Intersil was formed in August 1999 through the acquisition of the semiconductor business of Harris Corpor ...
, where he became a pioneer of low-voltage
CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...
-
Integrated Circuits An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...
. He was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal from the
Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:statesman, statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin ...
in 1969 and the McDowell Award in 1972. Hoerni died of
myelofibrosis Primary myelofibrosis (PMF) is a rare bone marrow blood cancer. It is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a type of myeloproliferative neoplasm, a group of cancers in which there is activation and growth of mutated cells in ...
on January 12, 1997, in
Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...
. He was 72.


Personal life

He was married to Anne Marie Hoerni and had three children: Annie Blackwell, Susan Killham, and Michael Hoerni. He had one brother, Marc Hoerni. His second marriage to Ruth Carmona also ended in divorce. Hoerni married Jennifer Wilson in 1993.


Philanthropy

An avid mountain climber, Hoerni often visited the
Karakoram Mountains The Karakoram () is a mountain range in the Kashmir region spanning the border of Pakistan, China, and India, with the northwestern extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Most of the Karakoram mountain range is withi ...
in
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
and was moved by the poverty of the Balti
mountain people Hill people, also referred to as mountain people, is a general term for people who live in the hills and mountains. This includes all rugged land above and all land (including plateaus) above elevation. The climate is generally harsh, with s ...
who lived there. He contributed the lion's share, $30,000, to Greg Mortenson's project to build a school in the remote village of Korphe, and later founded the Central Asia Institute with an endowment of $1 million to continue providing services for them after his death. Three Cups of Tea, chapter 5. (disk 2, tracks 16-18 of the audiobook version)"A gift for an entire village-- A failed mountaineer becomes a philanthropist after a village without a school saves his life"
, Marilyn Gardner, ''Christian Science Monitor'', September 12, 2006
Hoerni named Greg Mortenson as the first Executive Director of the organization, which continues to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan."Central Asia Institute History"
, Central Asia Institute
In December 2007, an article was published by Michael Riordan on Hoerni and his planar process in ''
IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...
''. The author claimed that Jay Last pointed out that Hoerni had incredible stamina and could hike for hours on little food or water.


Patents

* 1962, U.S. Patent 3,025,589 A ''«Method of manufacturing semiconductor devices»'', assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. * 1962, U.S. Patent 3,064,167 A ''«Semiconductor device»,'' assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. * 1963, U.S. Patent 3,108,914 A ''«Transistor manufacturing process»'', assigned to Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoerni, Jean 1924 births 1997 deaths Swiss emigrants to the United States Silicon Valley people American computer businesspeople American mountain climbers 20th-century American businesspeople Swiss expatriates in England Scientists at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory Businesspeople from Geneva