Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer (25 February 1909 – 9 September 2002) was an English electronics engineer and consultant, who is credited as being the first person to popularise the concepts that ultimately led to the development of the integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

[1] Dummer passed the first radar trainers and became a pioneer of reliability engineering at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern in the 1940s.

His work with colleagues at TRE led him to the belief that it would be possible to fabricate multiple circuit elements on and into a substance like silicon.

[3] In 1952 he became one of the first people to speak publicly on the topic of integrated circuits, presenting his conceptual work at a conference in Washington, DC.

G. W. A. Dummer was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England, 25 February 1909, and educated at Sale High School and Manchester College of Technology.

The pace of development increased dramatically during the early war years for the personnel of RRE, Malvern, and a close working relationship was established with the Royal Air Force.

In 1943 he visited the United States and Canada to advise on trainers and to help set up similar training devices in the USA.

At the end of the paper he made the statement: "With the advent of the transistor and the work on semi-conductors generally, it now seems possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires.

He got over his lack of suitable authority to commission development work by placing a small contract with Plessey under the auspices of his Constructional Techniques Group.

The result was shown at The International Components Symposium he initiated at RRE Malvern in September 1957, where he presented a model to illustrate the possibilities of solid-circuit techniques.

He began a campaign to encourage substantial UK investment in IC development, but was met largely with apathy.

He appeared on the popular BBC Television programme Tomorrow's World, extolling the virtues of integrated circuits.

His retirement as Superintendent of Applied Physics in 1966 allowed him to take up the role of a consultant, as well as continuing to add to his numerous published works.

He was Editor-in-Chief of Pergamon's International Journal Microelectronics and Reliability, which he had founded, and Editorial Adviser to Electronic Components (United Trade Press).