Betty Moore, a Silicon Valley philanthropist who championed health care and environmental causes, died Tuesday, just eight-and-a-half months after the death of her husband, the Intel co-founder and tech legend Gordon Moore. She was 95.
Through the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the couple used their astronomical wealth to donate more than $5 billion to scientific research, patient care and environmental conservation in the Bay Area and across the country.
“It’s good to give back to society if it’s at all possible,” Betty said in a short documentary about the couple. “And I also just feel that we have been very lucky in our lives.”
She was remembered this week for supporting pioneering advancements across scientific disciplines and helping launch health care programs at UC San Francisco, UC Davis and Stanford Medicine.
“Betty’s profound leadership and influence on health care practices will continue to make a difference on our campus and beyond,” UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood said in a statement. “She and Gordon helped revolutionize health care as we know it today.”
Gordon Moore, the pioneering Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind “Moore’s law,” which describes the inevitable advances from microchip technology, died in March at 94.
His wife of more than seven decades, Betty Irene Moore, was born on Jan. 9, 1928, and grew up on her family’s fruit ranch in Los Gatos. She attended Los Gatos High School and developed a love of the outdoors while working on the ranch when Silicon Valley was still a primarily agricultural area known as the “Valley of Hearts Delight.”
Betty went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism from San Jose College, where she met Gordon on a student retreat to the Monterey Peninsula. In 1950, Gordon enrolled at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the couple married before moving to Southern California.
They shared a passion for nature, often going on camping and fishing trips throughout the state, including the San Mateo coast, which they later helped preserve.
“We used to go on fishing dates before we got married,” Betty recalled in the documentary. “This sounds really weird, but I always enjoyed trout fishing or fishing off the pier at Santa Cruz. It’s been a wonderful thing, and all the fishes live in the most beautiful places in the world.”
In Southern California, Betty got a job with the Ford Foundation, one of the nation’s largest private foundations, jumpstarting her decades of philanthropic work. She would eventually serve on the board of El Camino Hospital in Mountain View and volunteer at the Palo Alto Senior Day Care Center.
The Moores soon returned to the Bay Area, where Gordon founded Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. As Intel grew to dominate the chip industry, the couple became astonishingly rich from Gordon’s stock in the company. He estimated he was worth $26 billion by 2000. But his fortune substantially shrank as the company’s share price plunged and he gave away much of his wealth.
The couple would establish themselves as philanthropic giants, launching the Moore Family Foundation in 1986 with their sons Steven and Kenneth, and later the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2000.
“We at the foundation benefited directly from Betty’s guidance,” said Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, in a statement. “Those of us who met and worked with her will forever treasure her spirit, spark, and constant encouragement. Betty was pragmatic, direct, clear-thinking, and outspoken – the perfect twin star to Gordon in guiding their foundation.”
One of her most impactful achievements was founding the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis with $100 million in 2007. The school aims to empower nurses to improve patient care based on Moore’s personal experiences in the hospital and caring for others.
“Betty Irene Moore’s vision transformed health care education at UC Davis, and we are deeply honored that she will live on in our nursing school’s name,” UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May said in a statement. “We put Betty’s mandate into action every day: to improve life and health for all.”