Frank Greene, Jr. Ph.D. ’70 Inducted Into National Inventor’s Hall of Fame
Santa Clara University’s pioneering engineering alumnus Frank Greene, Jr., Ph.D. ’70 was posthumously inducted into the prestigious National Inventor’s Hall of Fame on Feb. 11, 2026.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973 in partnership with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and recognizes individuals who have developed and patented the greatest technological advances.
Greene was a trailblazer in many ways, as a brilliant and generous African-American engineer innovating in the early days of the computer and semiconductor industry in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.
He was among the first Black students to earn a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and also the first Black cadet to complete that university’s Air Force ROTC program. As an Air Force officer, he worked in the National Security Agency focused on high-performance computers, after which he earned a master’s from Purdue University.
He helped break new ground for Black engineers when he came to Silicon Valley in the 1960s, joining the famed company Fairchild Semiconductor, birthplace of many technology legends. While at Fairchild, he earned his doctorate in electrical engineering from Santa Clara in 1970. He joined Santa Clara’s Board of Trustees that year, making him the first Black trustee at the University, where he also served as an adjunct professor.
A consummate innovator, Greene developed and held the patent for the integrated circuit that made Fairchild a leader in the semiconductor industry.
His Hall of Fame induction announcement notes that one of Greene’s biggest contributions to the semiconductor industry was co-inventing a way to store information on chips that enabled the industry to waste far fewer chips, and to make those memory chips work faster than any other at the time.
After his time at Fairchild and Santa Clara, Greene created two software firms —one of which was the largest Black-owned business in Northern California at the time— and then created a startup investment company, NewVista Capital in 1986. NewVista helped launch numerous companies led by women and minority entrepreneurs.
Palo Alto City Hall featured him in 2009 as one of the 50 most important African-Americans in technology. He was awarded Santa Clara University School of Engineering’s highest honor, the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award, and was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame by the Silicon Valley Engineering Council in 1991.
Greene was deeply committed to giving back, creating the GO-Positive Foundation that used a leadership model called VRE (Vision, Relationships and Execution), for mentoring high school students and young business professionals.
In 2001, the Dr. Frank S. Green Scholars Program (GSP) was established to develop 21st century leaders with strong science and mathematics backgrounds. GSP, which still exists as a nonprofit affiliated with the California Alliance of African American Educators, provides long-term support for grade- and high school students through hands-on math, science, and technology experiences and workshops; science fairs and engineering competitions, and entrepreneurial/leadership programs.
His legacy continued at Santa Clara through his daughter, Angela, who graduated in 1980, and his grandchildren, Henry Gage ’11 and Jacqueline Gage ’13.
