Bob Widlar
1937 – 1991
Made the op-amp a monolithic chip.
A brilliant, hard-living American engineer, Widlar designed the first widely successful monolithic op-amps and voltage references at Fairchild and National in the 1960s — turning analog design into an integrated-circuit art.
The op-amp and reference tools here exist in their chip form because of Widlar. His circuits were legendary; so was his temperament.
Portrait: a stylized blueprint-line rendering, not a photograph.
Contributions in the toolbox
- 1965
µA709 monolithic op-amp; the IC era begins.
→ Op-Amp Gain