Caltech Mourns the Passing of Betty I. Moore, Honorary Life Member of the Caltech Community, 1928–2023
Betty Irene Moore—co-founder of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and honorary life member of the Caltech community—passed away on December 12, 2023. She was 95 years old.
"Betty's vision, compassion, and generosity helped to shape Caltech's future," says David Thompson (MS '78), chair of Caltech's Board of Trustees. "The Moores enabled the Institute to pursue ambitious goals and serve the community."
Moore (born Whitaker) first became affiliated with Caltech in 1950 after marrying Gordon Moore (PhD '54) and moving to Pasadena so that he could begin his graduate studies at the Institute. During their decades-long relationship with Caltech, the Moores established themselves as two of the institution's most significant philanthropists.
In 2001, the Moores personally donated $300 million to Caltech, combined with a second contribution of $300 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Together, the two gifts represented the largest donation ever to an institution of higher learning in the United States at the time. The resources supported health and medicine, alternative energy development, information systems, seismology, nanotechnology, and astronomy, among other areas. The Moores donated an additional $100 million to Caltech to create a permanent endowment for graduate research, part of a larger $137 million contribution to Caltech's recent Break Through campaign.
"The wit, joy, and effervescence Betty Moore brought to the world will be sorely missed," says Caltech President Thomas Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "Gordon and Betty's impact on Caltech, on science, and in support of young people will continue to be felt for generations."
Born in 1928, Betty Whitaker was raised from the age of 2 on her grandparents' orchard ranch in Los Gatos, California, following the death of her father due to tuberculosis. She attended Campbell Grammar School and Los Gatos High School, where she graduated in 1945.
Passionate about foreign affairs, history, and sociology, Moore spent summers enrolled in international studies sessions at Mills College, attending and covering for her high school newspaper the 1945 San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization, where she witnessed the development of the United Nations Charter.
She went on to study journalism at San Jose State University, earning her AB in 1949. In 1947, she met Gordon Moore at a student retreat held at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California. After working briefly in San Francisco as a stenographer at U.S. Rubber Company, she married Gordon in September 1950, a day before he began his graduate studies at Caltech.
In Pasadena, she worked briefly in advertising and publishing for Consolidated Engineering Corporation before joining the Ford Foundation when it opened its Pasadena office. The position provided her with the opportunity to support the household while learning the operations of one of the country's largest private foundations.
In the summer of 1953, the Moores moved to Silver Springs, Maryland. Gordon joined Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Their family grew when the Moores' first son, Kenneth, was born in December 1954. They moved back to the West Coast after Gordon joined the Shockley Semiconductor Corporation, a transistor manufacturer founded by William Shockley (BS '32; Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1956), and second son, Steven, was born in October 1959.
Gordon's scientific and entrepreneurial career skyrocketed with his successful establishment of Fairchild Semiconductor and, later, Intel Corporation. The Moores co-founded the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2000 with a vision to create positive outcomes for future generations. The foundation works to advance scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care, and the preservation of the special character of the Bay Area. The generous support provided by the Moore Foundation was designed "to tackle large, important issues at a scale where it can achieve significant and measurable impacts."
Moore's personal experiences with the health care system motivated her to improve hospital care at the bedside. Her commitment to this cause led the foundation to establish the Betty Irene Moore Nursing Initiative in 2003 and, then in 2007, to make a $100 million commitment to create the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis. Through their personal philanthropy, the Moores also helped establish the Betty Irene Moore Women's Hospital at UC San Francisco and the Betty Irene Moore Children's Heart Center at Stanford.
Moore served on the board of El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California, and volunteered at the Palo Alto Senior Day Care Center. She also served as a member of the Governing Board of Filoli, a historic house and garden near Woodside, California, that is part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and served on its Fine Arts Committee. She was a member of the International Game Fish Association, where she held a women's world record for 13 years for lingcod caught off Queen Charlotte Sound, British Columbia.
She was preceded in death by Gordon, her husband of more than seven decades; and is survived by her sons Kenneth and Steven, daughters-in-law Kristin L. Moore and Kathleen Justice-Moore, and four grandchildren. The flag at the east end of Caltech Pond will be flown at half-mast Friday, December 15 through Monday, December 18, in her honor.
