Because relatively few others will take note, in this age of celebrity-for-all-the-wrong-reasons--and often for no good reason at all--I would like to mention the passing on Monday of Jack Kilby.

I didn't know Jack Kilby, but I should have known more about him. And so should have everyone else in this pop culture world of ours.

Jack Kilby died with the same kind of celebrity that many others who have so profoundly affected our lives have: very little. From what I read, that's pretty much the way he wanted it.

The sense of loss for a John Lennon or a Kurt Cobain or a Walter Payton or even an Elvis is real for many fans whose lives were affected by their art or talent. And art is an important part of our lives. But why is it that too many of us didn't know Jack Kilby? He was a Nobel Prize winner, after all. He won the award in physics five years ago for his invention in 1958 of the integrated circuit.

Outside the scientific community, we don't much celebrate things like the invention of the integrated circuit. And at the time it was invented, Kilby himself didn't realize the magnitude of what he had done. But we sure do make use if it and the technologies that blossomed from it. And we sure do take them for granted.

Jack Kilby was from Great Bend, Kansas. He was educated in the Midwest as well, earning degrees in electrical engineering from the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin. He went to work in 1947 with the Centralab Division of Globe Union Inc. in Milwaukee, then moved on to Texas Instruments in 1958 where he invented the IC. The Nobel committee said he "laid the foundation of modern information technology."

I could die happy knowing my work had had such a profound effect on the world.

The IC paved the way for the microchip and every electronic gadget and critical piece of high-tech gear in the world. Without it, we would not know the cell phone, the video game, the handheld music players, the Mars Rover, and on and on. Yet we hold no candlelight vigil. Mourners don't gather by the thousands to lay teddy bears at the door of the science department at Texas A&M University where he taught. Something is wrong with that picture. It must have something to do with celebrity, priorities and other intellectual maladies that plague society today.

Had he not invented the IC, someone else would have. The same can be said of Thomas Edison or the Wright Brothers to whom he has been compared. But he did. And they did. And I, for one, am grateful for their efforts.

There are all kinds of heroes--some more heroic than others--but heroes like Jack Kilby are too often unsung. Jack Kilby was 81. His contribution is eternal.

Click here to visit the Texas Instruments Web site and learn more about the kind of person and contributions we should celebrate.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com.