Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon Valley Pioneers

Intimate views of the driving personalities of America's high-tech elite... brilliant inventors, visionary entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists... give an unusual perspective on the development of California's Silicon Valley. Sixty-two of the legendary leaders in electronics, computers, and associated businesses are captured here in a rare combination of photographs, biographies, and personal impressions.

Meet professionals who love work as others love play and who have taken advantage of education and events to reach the apex of their fields. You will see photographs of three Nobel Prize winners and members of the National Academy of Sciences. In your journey through this book you will meet the fathers of the transistor and of artificial intelligence; the legendary 'Fairchild Eight;' a Hungarian refugee who became a corporate president; one of the few women electronics executives; ..the inventors of the airport metal detector, the computer 'mouse,' the Pong video game, and the linear accelerator used for cancer therapy.

These portraits highlights private glimpses of public figures in the laboratories of academe, executive suites, and even the bedroom of one flamboyant executive. Read the faces and motivations of individuals whose energies overflow into helicopter skiing, musical composition, and fly fishing. Once you seem them in characteristic settings, their esoteric world takes on human dimensions.