The sixth annual award honoring the memory of William A. Nierenberg, who led Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, as director for more than two decades, will be awarded to integrated circuit developer and Intel founder and Chairman Emeritus, Dr. Gordon E. Moore.
Moore will receive the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest during a ceremony on Thursday September 14, 2006, in which he will receive a bronze medal and $25,000. Following the ceremony, Dr. Moore will give a lecture entitled "Behind the Ubiquitous Microchip." The public is invited to attend free of charge. The lecture begins at 7 p.m. in the Potiker Theatre at the La Jolla Playhouse on the UC San Diego campus.
Gordon E. Moore is currently Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation. Moore co-founded Intel in 1968, serving initially as Executive Vice President. He became President and Chief Executive Officer in 1975 and held that post until elected Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1979. He remained CEO until 1987 and was named Chairman Emeritus in 1997.
Moore is widely known for "Moore's Law," in which in 1965 he predicted that the number of transistors the industry would be able to place on a computer chip would double every year. In 1975, he updated his prediction to once every two years. While
originally intended as a rule of thumb in 1965, it has become the guiding principle for the industry to deliver ever-more-powerful semiconductor chips with proportionate decreases in cost.
Moore earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology. He was born in San Francisco, Calif., on Jan. 3, 1929.
He is a director of Gilead Sciences Inc., a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the IEEE. Moore also serves on the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology. He received the National Medal of Technology from President George Bush in 1990.
The Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest is named for William Nierenberg (1919-2000), a renowned national science leader who served Scripps Institution as director from 1965 to 1986. The recipient of numerous awards and honors for professional research and public service, Nierenberg was a leading expert in several fields of underwater research and warfare, and was known for his work in low-energy nuclear physics.
Past recipients of the Nierenberg Prize are naturalist E. O. Wilson (2001), newsman Walter Cronkite (2002), marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco (2003), primatologist Dame Jane Goodall (2004) and nature filmmaker Sir David Attenborough (2005).