C. Harry Knowles (August 15, 1928 – January 7, 2020) was an American physicist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a prolific inventor who held some 400 patents.
[2] In 1953, Knowles started his career at Bell Laboratories exploring the possibilities of the then-new technology of the transistor.
These faster transistors were used in Project Vanguard radio transmitters as well as the Nike Zeus anti-aircraft missile system.
At the annual IEEE international convention in New York City in 1964, leaders of the electronics industry argued that integrated circuits were the future of the industry, including Motorola vice president and general manager C. Lester Hogan, Texas Instruments president and cofounder Patrick E. Haggerty, Fairchild Semiconductor cofounder Robert Noyce, General Electric's general manager of semiconductor products Leonard Maier, and Zenith vice-president for engineering J. E. Brown.
Moore's law was more successful at spreading this consensus, as it was more clear and accessible, with a direct metric (transistor count) extrapolated from real data, but Knowles' presentation and article predated it by a year.
The foundation publishes a journal, Kaleidoscope: Educator Voices and Perspectives, edited by Knowles Senior Fellows.