Jay Last

Jay Taylor Last (October 18, 1929 – November 11, 2021) was an American physicist, silicon pioneer, and member of the so-called "traitorous eight" that founded Silicon Valley.

Last was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, on October 18, 1929, at the beginning of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and grew up during the Great Depression.

Both his parents were teachers, but his father left teaching to work in a steel mill in hopes of earning a better living.

During the depression, there was no work in the steel mills, but the family managed by growing and preserving its own food.

During World War II, his father worked six to seven days a week, 12 hours a day, under demanding and dangerous physical conditions.

Jay Last enjoyed hiking, walking, and exploring while growing up.

Between his junior and senior years of school, at age 16, he and a friend hitch-hiked to San Jose, California, and worked for the summer picking fruit.

A voracious reader, he tended to complete his schoolwork well in advance of the rest of the class.

He was encouraged by his chemistry teacher, Lucille Critchlow, who recommended him to work with Frank W. Preston, a local industrial chemist whose laboratory studied glass and glass fracture.

Last began working at Preston's lab as a high-school student and continued to work for him as a university student, whenever he had a break.

Last graduated from Butler Senior High School in 1947 and applied for a scholarship to study Optics at the University of Rochester.

Last had heard about the program from his father and did not apply anywhere else.

It was a rigorous program, and three-quarters of the entering class had dropped out by the time the program was finished.

The program had close ties to Eastman Kodak and to Bausch & Lomb: Last's class in optical design was taught by Rudolph Kingslake of Kodak.

Last worked for a summer at the trouble-shooting department of Kodak's optical instrumentation plant, before his senior year of university.

He tested a camera, to be used in the B52 aircraft, at −60 °F temperatures.

He earned his bachelor's degree in Optics from the University of Rochester in 1951.

He had become increasingly interested in physics, and was encouraged by an advisor, Parker Givens, to become involved in the emerging area of solid-state physics.

After accepting an offer to study at MIT, he joined the laboratory of physicist Arthur R. von Hippel, and studied the physical structure of ferroelectric materials.

He also took classes from John Clarke Slater and Victor F. Weisskopf.

A material he was working with, barium titanate, underwent unusual structural changes when it became ferroelectric, requiring Last to study it using infrared spectroscopy.

Last used a new instrument, a Beckman IR-3 spectrophotometer, and worked closely with staff from Beckman Instruments to report and fix problems.

He earned his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1956.

He was attracted by the west coast, which he had visited as a student.

With possibilities of working at General Electric, at Bell Laboratories, and at Beckman Instruments, he was referred by Arnold Beckman to William Shockley.

Shockley was starting up Shockley Semiconductor as a division of Beckman Instruments.

Shockley flew out to MIT to recruit Last, and made a vivid impression.

Regarding Shockley's arrival, Last has said, "I thought, my God, I've never met anybody this brilliant. I changed my whole career plans and said I want to go to California and work with this man."

Last worked at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments from April 1956 to September 1957.

Shockley insisted on supervising each scientist individually, with little or no communication between group members.

Last spent much of his time working on basic surface properties of materials, trying to explain anomalous results from four-layer silicon diodes.

Last credits Shockley as being "an extraordinary, brilliant man."

"He made right decisions. He hired a good group of people... It was the right technology, the right material, the right group of people to implement it, and wham."

However, Shockley was not skilled at working with people, and his relationships with employees in the company deteriorated rapidly.

In January 1957, a group of seven employees, including Last, appealed to Arnold Beckman to ask that he intervene in the company's operations.

Beckman initially seemed sympathetic, but ended up supporting Shockley.

The dissatisfied scientists included much of the core technical talent of the project: Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, and Robert Noyce.

Initially looking for another company to join, they began to consider the possibility of creating their own company, with the support of Wall Street investors.

They were eventually joined by C. Sheldon Roberts, and termed the "Traitorous Eight".

They have also been called the "fathers of Silicon Valley".