Cecil Howard Green was one of the four founders of
Texas Instruments (TI), along with
Eugene McDermott,
J. Erik Jonsson and
H. Bates Peacock. They bought
Dallas-based
Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI) in December of 1941, and Cecil became
Vice President. He rose to
President in 1950, became
Chairman of the Board in 1955, and Honorary Chairman of the Board in 1959, a position he held until 1975.
TI was formed in 1945 and became the holding company for GSI. Cecil served as a Director of that Company from its inception until 1975 when he became an Honorary Director. Texas Instruments had more than $8 billion in revenue last year.
Cecil was born in Manchester, England on August 6, 1900. His family sailed from Liverpool to North America in 1902, settling in Sydney, Nova Scotia. From Sydney they went to Montreal, Toronto, and San Francisco, where they lived through the great earthquake of 1906.
He entered M.I.T. as a transfer student in 1921, and graduated in 1923 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He continued his studies and got his Master's in 1924, and was hired by General Electric's Turbine Generation Division in the Alternating Current Engineering Department, where he also worked as an instructor in advanced engineering at GE's school.
Cecil Green was made an Honorary Knight of the British Empire in 1991 by Queen Elizabeth II. He died on April 12, 2003 at the age of 102.