The Man Behind the Microchip

by Leslie Berlin

  The two-semester Quantum Theory of Matter course taught by the imperious John Slater was one of Noyce’s favorites. Slater would enter the room on the last ring of the bell announcing the start of class. After quickly greeting the students, he would distribute the blue sheets of notes he had typed up the night before—they would soon be published in a book that became one of the field’s foundational texts—and walk briskly to the front of the room. Slater then turned his back on the class, faced the blackboard, and began to lecture in ringing, complete paragraphs, his precise script snaking its chalky way across the board. The lecture would continue in this manner—occasionally punctuated by Slater’s calling out a question (still not turning around)—until his writing reached the lower right-hand corner of the board. At that point, Slater would tuck any loose end of the discussion neatly into the conclusion of his talk, and turn to face the students. “That will be all for today, gentlemen,” he invariably concluded—mere seconds before the dismissal bell rang. This happened at every lecture.12

  The subjects covered in Slater’s remarkable performance included quantum mechanics, simple systems, and thermal dynamics in the first semester, and then in the second—finally—solid-state physics: the study of how electrons move in solids. The field was founded on the quantum mechanics in which Slater was expert, and its most exciting practical application, of course, was the transistor that had captivated Noyce in Gale’s Grinnell classroom. Noyce had an intuitive sense about solid-state physics that impressed even his most well prepared MIT classmates. He could answer almost any question Slater posed with alacrity.

  Noyce’s fifth course was Electronics, taught by a pale-eyed, strong-jawed experimental physicist named Wayne Nottingham. He was MIT’s primary expert in a field called “physical electronics,” which explored the movement of electrons through solids, vacuums, and gases. Like most experimental physicists, and like Noyce himself, Nottingham possessed a God-given talent for tinkering. Nottingham was forever building equipment that he could not find elsewhere. His most significant contribution to the field was the Nottingham gauge, which measured the pressure in vacuums electronically.

  Although Nottingham had made his reputation in the study of electrons in vacuums, he and his students followed the developments in solid-state physics from ringside seats at the Seminar on Physical Electronics, a conference Nottingham organized every year at MIT. The seminar was extremely informal—presentations had no time limits, and panelists were warned that they would not so much be addressing specific subjects as “introducing topics for discussion”—but it nonetheless attracted some of the nation’s top solid-state electronics researchers. In Noyce’s first year at MIT, the seminar included a panel specifically on transistors and several on semiconductors. One of the speakers was John Bardeen, one of the three inventors of the transistor at Bell Labs.13

  The Physical Electronics seminar might well have been Noyce’s only direct instruction on the topic that year, for MIT had yet to incorporate the transistor into its formal curriculum. Nottingham’s Electronics class, for example, did not mention the device at all in 1949. The transistor was a new technology, and it had very real problems. It was hard to build a functional point-contact transistor; indeed, simply replicating the Bell team’s results was difficult. Vacuum tubes, by contrast, were entering their heyday: they were far cheaper and more stable than ever before. No one—certainly not Nottingham—saw any evidence to indicate that the point-contact transistor would be in a position to replace tubes for a long, long time.14

  OVER THE COURSE of his first semester at MIT, Noyce developed tactics to compensate for his deficits in undergraduate science classes. He learned how to study, something he had hardly bothered with in college, where he had chosen his math and physics double major because it offered “the path of least resistance” for him. Indeed, one reason he had enjoyed his science classes at Grinnell, he said, was that unlike courses such as history, in which “you had to study because you had to know the answer going into the exam,” in his science classes, he could “always come up with the answer” simply by deriving it from his existing knowledge of “basic scientific principles.” This approach simply did not work when he arrived at MIT, where his knowledge of those basic principles lagged that of his classmates so dramatically. For perhaps the first time in his life, he had to make a concerted effort to acquire scientific knowledge.15

  But after those first difficult weeks spent cramming new information into his head, Noyce began to relax. Once he had brought his knowledge base to the point that it equaled his classmates,’ he found he could once again improvise and derive his way into solutions. Indeed, after his first semester, he passed every course he took at MIT with honors.16

  His classmates first began to take note of his quick mind during the impromptu study sessions that convened nearly every night in the Graduate House. (Noyce had to drive there from his apartment and then drive home in the early hours of the morning.) Most nights Noyce could be found in a group of three or four students, his cigarette aglow and his chair tilted back so far that he occasionally toppled over. Noyce relied on a stock of shortcuts to stay focused and drill through to a problem’s solution. In calculus, for example, the symbol for derivative is a lowercase “d.” Partial derivatives are represented by a rounded lowercase “d” (∂), which had a tendency, when dawn was breaking, to look remarkably similar to a lowercase d. Instead of saying “take the derivative (or partial deriviative) of X,” which was how everyone else read problems aloud, Noyce invented a verbal notation that simultaneously reduced confusion and sped up the reading. “Dee X,” he would say, rather than “take the derivative of X”; he used “die” for partial derivative. It was a small thing, but little timesavers like this enabled him to solve problems faster than almost anyone else—and this was fast company. His friends soon nicknamed him “Rapid Robert.”17

  Bud Wheelon, the gifted Stanford graduate, was shocked to learn that Rapid Robert did not have an assistantship and was living in penury. Wheelon, who would one day run technical operations for the CIA at the height of the Cold War, was already a man of action at age 20. He scheduled an appointment with Professor John Slater who, he freely admitted, scared him to death. At the appointed time, Wheelon appeared at Slater’s office in coat and tie. “I know it’s not any of my business,” he said, “but I’m convinced one of the two smartest people here [Gell-Mann being the other] is without any assistance. He’s really struggling and might leave.” Wheelon ventured that so many students had research assistantships that the department should be able to fund one more for Noyce.18

  Slater listened carefully and then flashed what Wheelon called a “microsecond smile.” The reply was short: “You’re right. It’s none of your business.” Wheelon was dismissed and the conversation was never mentioned again.

  Within weeks, however, the department awarded Noyce a teaching fellowship, plus a $240 “staff award” effective when school resumed after the holiday break. Slater, who certainly was familiar with Noyce’s newly outstanding academic performance, might well have been planning to increase Noyce’s financial aid at the end of the semester, even without Wheelon’s intercession. But then again, he might not have had such plans. It is impossible to know. Bud Wheelon never told Noyce what he did on his behalf.19

  The struggles over financial assistance reveal something about Noyce’s talents—that they could inspire such action is impressive—and his temperament, which kept him from lobbying on his own behalf. After all, Noyce could have gone to Slater himself, either to plead for more money or to demand that Slater increase his funding since he had proven himself one of the top students in the department.

  Noyce was constitutionally incapable of either of these approaches. He hated to ask for help, and he always avoided confrontation if he could. Typical was the occasion when Noyce was involved in a traffic accident in downtown Cambridge. The two drivers climbed out of their cars, their voices rising as they surveyed the damage. As Maurice Newste
in, whom Noyce had dropped off at a corner just moments before the accident, headed back towards the scene, he was surprised to see Noyce suddenly back away from the other driver and return to his own car. When he realized that Newstein had witnessed the exchange, Noyce seemed embarrassed—not about losing his temper but about backing down. “He thought he should have stood up to the guy,” Newstein said. Noyce worried about looking like a coward to his friend, but even that was preferable to a direct confrontation. Years later he would tell his daughter, “Nothing good ever came from being angry.”20

  THE TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIP liberated Noyce. He moved to the Graduate House, where he roomed with his friends Newstein and Clark. His finances in order, he quickly immersed himself in a whirlwind schedule that recalled his college days. Cambridge was a mecca for young, mostly single, men and women attending schools up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Handbills posted around town advertised football games, hockey tournaments, crew regattas, formal dances, socials, and parties—many of which Noyce attended. He organized a clambake at Wingaersheik Beach, off Cape Ann. He was there for MIT’s infamous “raining beer” party of 1950 during which a room full of physics graduate students was drenched in suds when the hosts, unable to determine how to tap the keg they bought, decided to drill into it with a corkscrew. He performed in several musicals, landing the lead in at least one, which his brother Gaylord attended. Sitting in the audience, Gaylord recalls, he understood something important about his brother for the first time. Bob’s confidence and charisma—not his innate talent—enabled him to “pass himself off as an expert” performer. “His tone wasn’t that great or accurate,” Gaylord explains, “but there he was, singing a lead.”21

  Bob Noyce’s tone could not have been too off, however. He auditioned for and joined Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica, one of the top choral groups in the country. Membership entailed weekly two-and-a-half-hour rehearsals, plus several performances each year. Noyce was a baritone and enjoyed singing a wide range of music: not just traditional favorites like the Haydn Mass (which the chorus performed each year in the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall), but also more modern pieces such as Randall Thompson’s “Alleluja”—a slow, meditative work based on the single word. In short order, Noyce began working his way through the female choral singers, dating one after the other. “He was smooth as silk,” recalls a friend from chorus who also attended MIT. “All the girls, wherever he went, were always very interested.”22

  “[Noyce] was a physical specimen,” explains his friend Maurice Newstein. “He was built like a bodybuilder.” Noyce swam almost daily and had a prizefighter’s well-defined physique. An ongoing parade of extremely attractive women appeared with Noyce at the front doors of the various houses he shared with Newstein and Clark during their four years at MIT. Noyce at several times seemed quite serious about a particular girl, but for whatever reason—he kept such matters to himself—the relationships inevitably ended.23

  In addition to their good looks, the women tended to share a certain attitude, a shell of East Coast urban sophistication that Noyce found irresistible. Clark, who came from a socially prominent family, and Newstein, who says he tried to project a “cocky” personality, also fit this description. His friends surmised that Noyce harbored deep within himself a fear that he would be seen as a Midwestern hayseed. Perhaps by associating with sophisticates, he might absorb a bit of élan himself. No one could ever accuse Noyce of pretending to be something he was not—his MIT colleagues invariably described him with terms such as “ordinary,” “easy to talk to,” “never put on airs,” or “down to earth”—but occasionally his friends would feel him studying them almost as if they were a lesson he had yet to fully master.24

  Noyce took his friends’ strengths as a personal challenge. His roommate George Clark, for example, was an amateur astronomer who kept in his room a six-inch parabolic telescope mirror that he had ground and polished by hand in high school. Although Noyce knew nothing about astronomy, he managed to turn the mirror into a working telescope with only a little direction from Clark. In another instance, Noyce watched with avid attention while Clark made a new mirror, carefully grinding a handful of grit between two pieces of glass—one slightly convex, one slightly concave—until, after a good interval of grinding and rotating the glass, the curvature of the two pieces began to approximate a sphere. At this point, the glass could be covered with a reflective coating and installed in a telescope. Noyce decided grinding mirrors was unnecessarily labor intensive. He took it upon himself to outfit a phonograph machine with a wooden handle and built, in effect, an automatic mirror grinder, where one lens rotated on the spinning turntable, and the other was held in place by the handle. He jerry-rigged a workable model, but lost interest shortly after it was finished.25

  Maurice Newstein was a talented amateur painter, and so Noyce decided that he, too, wanted to try painting. True to form, Noyce determined that the key element he needed to inspire painterly greatness was not a class, but a model. He managed to convince a young woman—possibly his girlfriend—to model in bra and panties for him, Newstein, and a few others. It was all very discreet, and nothing untoward happened, but the experience was far more memorable for its participants than any painting Bob Noyce ever managed to produce.26

  Noyce also found time to fly the model airplane his parents sent from home, and to play a great deal of bridge, often late into the night. He applied for a Fulbright award to study in France, a country he chose because he wanted to see Europe, he could speak a bit of French—his maternal grandmother had taught him enough to complete his language requirement at Grinnell—and he calculated that he would be more likely to win a posting to France than to any English-speaking country. He won the award but declined it in favor of finishing his studies as soon as possible. Rapid Robert indeed.27

  AT THE END OF NOYCE’S FIRST YEAR of graduate school, Nathaniel Frank (of “Slaughter and Flunk” fame) replied to Grant Gale’s letter requesting information about Noyce’s performance:

  Mr. Noyce has been an outstanding student in all respects…. We are sufficiently impressed with his potential that we have nominated him for a Shell Fellowship in physics for the next academic year, and he has received this fellowship.

  You are to be congratulated on the excellence of the training which he has had, and we look forward to an outstanding performance by Mr. Noyce.28

  Grant Gale kept this letter for the rest of his life.

  The Shell Fellowship, which provided $1,200 per year, plus tuition, meant that Noyce would not have to worry about finances for his second year of school. After that, he was virtually guaranteed a research assistantship in his adviser’s lab. “When I came here this fall, I was hoping something like this might work out,” he told his parents. “It seems that my optomism [sic] was somewhat justified.”29

  After a summer in Boston working for Sylvania, Noyce began his second year with a semester of course work followed by oral examinations. These he passed in May 1951. He briefly worked as a consultant with an optics company on whose board Nottingham served, and Noyce also began working on cathodes and vacuum tubes as a research assistant in the Physical Electronics group at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). He audited a Solid-State Physics course at Harvard because he had already taken every relevant MIT class. But the bulk of Noyce’s attention shifted to selecting an adviser and starting the research for his PhD dissertation.30

  Nottingham was the obvious choice for an adviser. Noyce knew that he wanted to do experimental, not theoretical research. (“He admired people who did things,” says Newstein.) He also knew that he wanted to write a thesis somehow relevant to the transistor, and Nottingham’s work was as close as MIT got to experimental research on the topic. By 1951, half the questions on his Electronics exam involved transistors, and several of his advisees were writing dissertations that addressed the basic physics of the device, albeit indirectly.

  Moreover, Noyce liked Nottingham, who oozed bonhomie and pra
ctically bounced when he walked. Nottingham owned a rustic ski home in Rindge, New Hampshire, at the foot of Mount Monadnoc, and he did everything he could to spend his winters there, often inviting small groups of graduate students north for “working ski trips.” In exchange for skiing and lodging privileges, Nottingham required his visitors to help chop wood or work on the rope tow he had designed. In the evenings, he would mix martinis with the special gin he kept in deep freeze in his basement.

  During one of his trips to Nottingham’s house, Noyce learned to ski. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he began skiing at this time—no one remembers Noyce in the skis-awry-falling-down-the-mountain stage that plagues most beginners. Skiing shares with diving an exhilarating sense of abandoning the body to gravity, of tightly controlling physical form while hurtling through space. Noyce apparently started on the intermediate runs, on the assumption that since he would end up there soon enough, why not just skip the bunny slopes and aim high? Noyce’s passion for skiing soon ran so strong that by his third winter in Boston, he worried it might interfere with completing his studies. “I still see some possibility of getting out [of graduate school] sometime this winter,” he wrote near Thanksgiving, 1952, “but I think that I will have to introduce a ‘no thesisno ski’ rule to do so.”31

  Nottingham’s personality and physicality appealed to Noyce, who had a profound distrust of people he thought overly cerebral. (He once described a professor’s mind as “perverted … too much wrapped up in his own field and closed to anything else…. [He] will sit in silence rather than talk about anything but math.”) Noyce knew that he needed to consider more than just a personality match when choosing an adviser, however. An adviser’s reputation spilled over to his students, and Nottingham’s name did not hold the same power as Slater’s or Weisskopf’s. Moreover, Noyce worried that the equipment in Nottingham’s lab was “archaic” and that the professor himself “kn[ew] no theory, only how to do an experiment better than anyone else.”32