Google honors early electronics engineer Robert Noyce with today's doodle. Noyce was part of a group of researchers who left Shockley Semiconductor in 1957 to form Fairchild Semiconductor.  Known as the traitorous eight, these men are considered the real fathers of Silicon Valley.

Noyce, born in Iowa in 1927, received a PhD from MIT in 1953 in Physics, and after working at Schockley and starting Fairchild, went on to found Intel Corporation with Gordon Moore.  Here is a brief bio of Noyce from pbs.org, and another interesting one at history-computer.com

Robert Noyce