James F. "Jim" Gibbons (born September 19, 1931) is an American professor and academic administrator. He is credited (together with William Shockley) with starting the semiconductor device fabrication laboratory at Stanford University that enabled the semiconductor industry and created Silicon Valley. Gibbons is also credited for inventing Tutored Video Instruction, which is widely used at Stanford University and its Stanford Instructional Television Network. The Tutored Video Instruction is used to educate engineers and non students who are in need via SERA Learning Technologies (which Gibbons founded). Gibbons was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1974 for leadership as a teacher, author, and researcher in semiconductor electronics. Early life James F. Gibbons was born in Leavenworth, Kansas on September 19, 1931 to Clifford and Mary Gibbons. His father was a guard at Leavenworth until Gibbons was about eight years old. At that time, his father was transferred to a minimum security prison in Texarkana, Texas. Gibbons spent his middle and high school years there, until he went off to college. Higher education Gibbons left Texas to pursue his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Northwestern University chosen due to receiving a partial scholarship from Northwestern, Northwestern's proximity to Chicago and the jazz music scene there (Gibbons played trombone and was also pondering a possible musical career), and also due to Northwestern's co-op requirement. Gibbons co-oped at Tungstal, where he worked on vacuum tubes being used in televisions. In 1953, after five years (due to the mandatory co-op), Gibbons finished his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University in 1953. He also earned a National Science Foundation fellowship from his efforts at Northwestern, which was able to be used at any school across the United States. After discussions with his Northwestern advisor (who was the chairman of Electrical Engineering Department), Gibbons chose to accept admission to Stanford University for his advanced degree work. At Stanford, Gibbons took a course titled "Transistors and Active Circuit Design.”, which was being taught by John Linvill, formerly of Bell Labs. This course captivated Gibbons and he spent extra time with Linvill, leading Linvill to convince Gibbons that he should stay at Stanford and earn a Ph.D. Gibbons did just that (graduating with a Ph.D from Stanford in 1956) and his Ph.D. thesis was on a methodology for transistor circuit design that would utilize feedback to mitigate the variations between transistors of