Nobel Prize Recipient. Jack Kilby an American electrical engineer, received world-wide notoriety upon being awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. He received half of the coveted prize, sharing the remaining half with German-American physicist, Herbert Kroemer and Russian physicist, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov. Alferov and Kroemer received the award, according to the Nobel Prize committee "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics," whereas Kilby "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit." Born in Jefferson City, Missouri, he had his childhood in Great Bend, Kansas. He earned his BS degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois in 1947 and three years later, his MS degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. From 1947 to 1958, he worked for Centralab, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, designing and developing ceramic based silk screen circuits. In 1958, he joined Texas Instruments Corporation in Dallas, Texas. During the summer of 1958, working with borrowed equipment, he conceived and built the first electronic circuit in a single piece of semiconductor material. The first microchip was demonstrated and accepted on September 12, 1958. Kilby went on to pioneer military, industrial and commercial applications of microchip technology. In 1960, TI named him Manger of Engineering, Semiconductor Networks, and in 1967, he was named Manager of the TI Technology Customer Requirements Department. Beginning in 1970, he began to explore the use of silicon technology for generating electrical power from sunlight. He officially retired from Texas Instruments in the mid-1980s, but continued to consult with TI and other companies. In 1970, he received the National Medal of Science from United States President Richard M. Nixon, and in 1982, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The holder of more than 60 patents at the time of his passing, he died in Dallas after a brief battle with cancer at the age of 81.