Correspondence, writings, and assorted materials of Swiss-American engineer Jean A. Hoerni, one of the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor.

Jean A. Hoerni (1924-1997) was a Swiss-American engineer active in the early days of Silicon Valley. He completed a BS in mathematics from the University of Geneva before completing two physics PhDs. at Geneva and Cambridge. He moved to the United States in 1952 as a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry at California Institute of Technology with Linus Pauling. In 1956, Hoerni joined Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. One year later, he left to establish the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation as part of the "traitorous eight" along with Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and C. Sheldon Roberts. While at Fairchild, Hoerni developed the planar process of building transistors, which later became a critical part of the invention of the Silicon integrated circuit. Hoerni left Fairchild in 1961 to found Amelco, and later established Union Carbide Electronics and Intersil. Throughout his life, Hoerni was an avid mountain climber, both abroad and in California's High Sierras.

2 Linear Feet (3 manuscript boxes, 1 small flat-box)

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