Jean Hoerni

Jean Hoerni was the inventor of the planar process, a process through which transistors could be made out of silicon, as opposed to the usual germanium. He made this discovery after he and seven others, known as the Traitorous Eight, left Shockley’s Semiconductor Lab and create the Fairchild Semiconductor corperation. He died on January 12, 1997 in Seattle, Washington of mylofibrosis.