Important personalitiesBack

Jean Amédée Hoerni (September 26, 1924 - January 12, 1997) was a silicon transistor pioneer and a member of the 'traitorous eight'. He is remembered for developing the planar process for manufacturing semiconductor devices such as transistors.

Hoerni was born on September 26, 1924 in Geneva, Switzerland. He received a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from the University of Cambridge and another Ph.D. from the University of Geneva.

In 1952, he moved to the United States to work at the California Institute of Technology, where he became acquainted with William Shockley, the "father of the transistor."

A few years later, Shockley recruited Hoerni to work with him at the newly founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments in Mountain View, California. But Shockley's strange behavior would compel the so-called 'traitorous eight': Hoerni, Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts, to leave his laboratory and create the Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. At Fairchild Hoerni would go on to invent the planar process, which allowed transistors to be created out of silicon rather than germanium. The name "Silicon Valley" refers to this silicon.

Along with the 'traitorous eight' alumni Jay Last and Sheldon Roberts, Hoerni founded Amelco (known now as Teledyne) in 1961.

In 1964, he founded Union Carbide Electronics, and in 1967 Intersil.

He was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1969 and the McDowell Award in 1972.


Philanthropy

An avid mountain climber, Hoerni often visited the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan and was moved by the poverty of the Balti mountain people who lived there. He contributed the lion's share, $12,000, 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. Hoerni named Greg Mortenson as the first Executive Director of the organization, which continues to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.