Dr Robert Noyce, generally recognised as the joint inventor of the integrated circuit, died suddenly in Austin, Texas over the weekend after a heart attack. His death is a severe blow to the Sematech consortium formed in Austin to develop new process technologies to cut back the Japanese lead in semiconductors by virtue: Dr Noyce was president and chief executive of Sematech, and his acceptance of the post gave the co-op a credibility it would otherwise have lacked – and it is difficult to identify an industry figure of comparable standing that would be prepared to accept the post. Dr Noyce was working at Fairchild Camera & Instrument when he filed the patent in 1959 that led to his being cited as the joint developer of the integrated circuit. Jack Kilby, at Texas Instruments Inc, filed similar patents at about the same time. Dr Noyce left Fairchild with Gordon Moore in 1968 to found Intel Corp.