Complex sentence: In support of Moore's Law, Mead and his students carried out a physics-based analysis of possible materials, and predicted in 1972 that transistors could be made as small as 0.15 microns.
Split into simpler sentences: In support of Moore's Law, Mead and his students carried out a physics-based analysis of possible materials. In 1972, he predicted that transistors could be made as small as 0.15 microns.