SAN FRANCISCO, June 22: Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit (IC), the basis of the computer chip revolution and foundation of what is now a trillion-dollar industry, died of cancer on Monday.

Kilby, 81, made the discovery 47 years ago, when, as a recently hired engineer at Texas Instruments Inc., he was left to work alone in a laboratory while most of his 7,500 colleagues were taking a company-wide summer vacation leave.

Kilby, whom many place in the same league as Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for his work.—Reuters