Conventional wisdom descries a black hole between the infinite uncertainty of modern theoretical physics and the can-do spirit of entrepreneurship and engineering. One more reason to ignore conventional wisdom, says Carver Mead, who became a technology legend by working both sides of what often seems an uncrossable divide. A Caltech stalwart -- he is the emeritus Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science -- Mead is one of the seminal figures in the story of Silicon Valley, with a résumé stretching back to integrated-circuit pioneer Fairchild Semiconductor and more than 20 startups to his credit.

Mead's early work in "electron tunneling" provided insights crucial to the development of solid-state electronics. His calculation of the theoretical potential for shrinking transistors gave Intel founder Moore the basis for his eponymous law, which predicts the steadily increasing power of microchips. And in the early 1980s, Mead and Caltech colleague Richard Feynman, the late Nobel laureate physicist, took circuitry into a new dimension by exploring "neuromorphic" electronics modeled on living organisms. Along the way Mead has stacked up prizes, including the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for invention and innovation and the National Medal of Technology in 2003. But his proudest achievement is a string of companies that includes touch pad maker Synaptics and the revolutionary image-sensor and camera startup Foveon, both outgrowths of his work in neuromorphic computing.