Morris Chang (born July 10, 1931,
Ningbo,
Zhejiang province, China) is a Chinese-born engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who founded (1987) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a leading maker of computer chips.
Chang originally wanted to become a writer, but his father dissuaded him from the idea. In 1949 Chang moved to the
United States to attend
Harvard University. He later transferred to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned B.S. (1952) and M.S. (1953) degrees in
mechanical engineering. Chang landed a job at
Texas Instruments as an engineering manager in 1958. He received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from
Stanford University in 1964.
In his 25 years at Texas Instruments, Chang rose steadily through the management ranks, eventually becoming senior vice president in charge of the company’s global semiconductor business. He left Texas Instruments in 1984 to become president of General Instrument Corporation, but a year later the government of
Taiwan recruited him to take over as president of its Industrial Technology Research Institute.
Charged by the government with developing Taiwan’s fledgling semiconductor industry, Chang realized that electronics firms increasingly would need to outsource in order to cut costs, so he decided to create a company that would work under contract to meet the design needs of such firms by making chips and other electronic devices. With help from the government of Taiwan, he founded and became the first CEO of TSMC, which he built into one of the world’s most profitable
chip makers.