National Academies Press: OpenBook

Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research (1999)

Chapter: Appendix: Committee Biographies

« Previous: Bibliography
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

APPENDIX

COMMITTEE BIOGRAPHIES

THOMAS HUGHES (chair) is professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He will be visiting professor at Stanford University and at the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm) in spring 1999. Professor Hughes is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1985 he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology. The Society for the Social Studies of Science awarded him the John Desmond Bernal Award in 1990. In 1990 he received the Kenan Enterprise Award. The Johns Hopkins University named him a member of the Society of Fellows in 1984. He has been a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute of Advanced Study Berlin) and Distinguished Visiting Professor, New School for Social Research. His most recent book, Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon Books, 1998) is about large technological systems. Previous publications include Networks of Power: Electrification of Western Society, 1880-1930 and Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer, both of which won the Dexter Prize for the outstanding book on the history of technology (in 1985 and 1972, respectively). With Agatha Hughes he edited Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual (Oxford University Press, 1990). Dr. Hughes completed his graduate work in European history at the University of Virginia.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

GWEN BELL is the founding president of The Computer Museum. She started the first and only computer museum in the world. Dr. Bell successfully applied for nonprofit status in 1981, moved to downtown Boston and opened a 42,000-square-foot facility in 1984, raised $3.3 million in capital and grew the operating budget from $30,000 to $1 million per year, and achieved a unique joint collecting agreement with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Before that, she was a social science editor for Pergamon Press where she was responsible for a 125-book product line. Dr. Bell was visiting associate professor, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University from 1972 to 1973. She was also associate professor of urban affairs, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. Her published books are Strategies for Human Settlements (University Press of Hutchinson & Ross: Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) and Human Identity in the Urban Environment with J. Tyrwhitt (A Pelican Original, London and New York). Dr. Bell was a United Nations consultant for Indonesia, The Philippines, and Brazil from 1970 to 1977. She received her Ph.D. in geography from Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1967, her M.C.R.P. in city and regional planning from Harvard University in 1959, and her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

ERICH BLOCH is a Distinguished Fellow with the Counsel on Competitiveness. He was previously the director of the National Science Foundation (1984-1990) and a corporate vice-president for technical personnel development at IBM, which he joined in 1952 after receiving a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Buffalo. He is the recipient of many honorary degrees and the National Medal of Technology for his part in the development of the IBM/System 360 computer, which "revolutionized the computer industry." Mr. Bloch has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Pioneer Award, the IEEE Founders Medal, and the National Academy of Engineering's Bueche Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Sweden's Academy of Engineering Sciences, and the Japan Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of its Computer Society, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

ROBERT BRESSLER is chief scientist of networking for Sun Microsystems, Inc. His responsibilities include charting the future directions for networking products and advanced development in networking for Sun as well as working across all the Sun companies to guide the direction of networking technologies. Prior to joining Sun in 1994, Mr. Bressler spent 4 years at Network Equipment Technologies (N.E.T.) as senior vice-presi-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

dent, technology and corporate development, and chief technical officer. His responsibilities included long-term strategic planning and overall product architecture for N.E.T. and ADAPTIVE, as well as the investment strategy for R&D spending, and advanced R&D activities. Before joining N.E.T. in 1990, Mr. Bressler spent 4 years at 3Com Corporation. His most recent assignment at 3Com was as chief technical officer and vice-president, corporate development. His responsibilities included overall product strategy for 3Com, and, in particular, the creation, with Microsoft, of the OS/2 LAN Manager. Prior to joining 3Com in 1986, Mr. Bressler spent more than 13 years with Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc. (BBN), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he held a variety of senior management positions, most recently senior vice-president of development and engineering for BBN Communications. At BBN, Mr. Bressler played a key role in the management and development of packet switching for data communications including the ARPANET and the evolution of protocols including TCP/IP, X.25, satellite-based communications, and data communications security. Mr. Bressler holds both an MSEE and a BSEE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His thesis topic was in the area of distributed computing, the research for which was all done on the ARPANET.

PAUL DAVID is an economist and economic historian who has held the William Robertson Coe Professorship of American Economic History at Stanford University since 1978. He was educated at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, and joined the Stanford Economics Department in 1961. The evolution and diffusion of technological systems and the role of technological and organizational innovation in long-term economic growth have been focal points in Dr. David's research and teaching, which has included such themes as the importance of the systems approach to understanding technological change, the economic significance of network externalities and technical standards in system development, and the "path-dependent," historical character of these processes. A frequent contributor to books and scholarly journals, Dr. David currently co-edits Economics of Innovation and New Technology and serves on the editorial boards of Computers, Standards and Interfaces the Journal of Industrial and Corporate Change, and other journals. He has been a consultant to the National Research Council, the Library of Congress, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other national and international bodies. Dr. David is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the International Econometric Society. In May of 1993 he was elected to a senior research fellowship in economics at All Souls College, Oxford.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

MARVIN DENICOFF graduated from Temple University in 1949 with a degree in liberal arts. He did graduate work in literature and linguistics at Temple University and Mexico City College. Mr. Denicoff joined the Navy Department in 1951, and was among the early civil service trainees in the emerging fields of computer science and operations research. Beginning in 1954, he was assigned to George Washington University as liaison for research in logistics and computation. During a 6-year period with George Washington University, he wrote or co-wrote more than 20 scientific papers in the topic areas of inventory control, value theory, failure analysis, and business data processing. In 1960, Mr. Denicoff took a research management position with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and 2 years later became director of the Information Sciences Program. In this capacity, he directed, until his retirement in August 1983, a multimillion-dollar per-year basic research grant program in such fields as artificial intelligence, robotics, computer graphics, man-machine systems, computer architecture, and software. Mr. Denicoff has served as ex-officio member of the Computer Science Board of the National Research Council and has been a participant, leader, or advisor to such government groups as the Department of Defense (DOD) Tri-Service Software Research Committee, the Science Advisory Board on Supercomputers, and the United States Information Agency Program on Artificial Intelligence. Mr. Denicoff has been honored for his government service with a Meritorious Service Award; he is one of the few individuals who have been given two Distinguished Civilian Service Awards. In 1983, he was given a special award by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence for continuing contributions to that field of research. Mr. Denicoff was a co-founder, in 1983, of Thinking Machines Corporation and served with that firm as a vice-president and board member until his retirement in 1996. He has had an affiliation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab in the capacity of principal research associate. In addition to his long career in computer science, Mr. Denicoff is a short-story writer and play-wright. His stories have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies.

DAVID HOUNSHELL is Luce Professor of Technology and Social Change at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studies innovation in both its technological and its organizational dimensions. Since 1982, he has addressed the rise of industrial research and development in the United States and the problems of managing scientific and technical research in organizations. He is also studying the Cold War and its influence on the pursuit of science, technology, and enterprise in the United States, and this work has led to one of his current projects, a history of the RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, from its creation in 1948 to the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

end of the Cold War. Another current project is the development of a sequel to his first book, which will bring his study of the development of American manufacturing technology to the end of the 20th century. His long-term writing project is a book tentatively titled The Wealth of a Nation: The Dynamics of Science, Technology, and Business in the United States, 1775-1990. A shorter-term project is his editorial work on a massive diary kept by the late Crawford H. Greenewalt in his role as liaison between the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory and the DuPont Company during the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb project); this diary will be published by the American Philosophical Society. Hounshell received the 1978 Browder J. Thompson Memorial Prize Award of the IEEE, the 1987 Dexter Prize in the history of technology, the 1992 Thomas Newcomen Award in business history, and the 1992 Williamson Medal from the Business History Conference.

AMOS JOEL is retired after a 43-year career at Lucent Bell Laboratories. He is a pioneer in the design, development, and evaluation of electronic switching and information processing systems. He has lectured and written extensively in the United States and abroad on switching principles and history. Mr. Joel received a B.S. (1940) and an M.S. (1942) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a life Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Joel has won numerous awards, including the IEEE Medal of Honor (1992) and Bell Medal (1972), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Centenary Award (1983), the Columbian Genoa Prize (1984), the Kyoto Prize (1989), and the U.S. National Medal of Technology (1993).

TIMOTHY LENOIR is professor and co-chair of Stanford University's program on the history of science. Dr. Lenoir received a B.A. (1970) from Saint Mary's College, Morage, California. He also received a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from Indiana University in 1974. He has received numerous honors and awards, including a NATO Post-doctoral Fellowship in Science (1975-1976), an NSF Research Grant (1978-1980), and the Provost's Research Fund Award, Stanford University (1994). Among his many publications are The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology (D. Reidel, Dordrecht and Boston, 1982), Politik im Tempel der Wissenschaft: Forschung und Machtausubung im deutschen Kaiserreich (Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, 1992), Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines (Stanford University Press, 1997), and Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication (Stanford University Press, 1998).

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

M. DOUGLAS McILROY, retired from Bell Laboratories, is an adjunct professor of computer science at Dartmouth College. His research interests focus on computer programming and systems, especially programming languages and text processing, graphics algorithms, searching and sorting, and computer security. He received a B.E.P. (1954) from Cornell University and a Ph.D. (mathematics, 1959) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

EMERSON W. PUGH is the author or co-author of a college physics text and four books on the history of IBM and the information processing industry. His most recent book is Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology (MIT Press, 1995). After receiving his Ph.D. in physics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1956, Dr. Pugh worked for IBM for 35 years in a variety of capacities, including research scientist, product development manager, and corporate executive. He is chairman of the IEEE History Committee, a director of the IEEE Foundation, a trustee of the Charles Babbage Foundation, and a trustee of the Samuel F.B. Morse Historic Site. Dr. Pugh is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he served as president of the IEEE in 1989.

CHARLES L. SEITZ is president of Myricom, Inc., a start-up company involved in research, development, production, and sales of high-speed computers and local-area networks. During the 16 years before founding Myricom, he was a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where his research and teaching were in the areas of very large scale integrated circuit (VLSI) design, computer architecture and programming, and concurrent computation. He earned S.B. (1965), S.M. (1967), and Ph.D. (1971) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was also an instructor and the recipient of the Goodwin Medal for "conspicuously effective teaching." He was a consultant and member of the technical staff of the Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation during its initial years (1968-1972), an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Utah (1970-1972), and a consultant and leader of several research and development projects for Burroughs Corporation (1971-1978). His research in VLSI and concurrent computing at Caltech, including the development of the Cosmic Cube multicomputer, was selected by Science Digest as one of the top 100 innovations in 1985. Dr. Seitz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1992 for "pioneering contributions to the design of asynchronous and concurrent computer systems."

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×

CHARLES THACKER is director of advanced systems for Microsoft Corporation. He was previously a senior corporate consultant engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center. During his 13 years at Digital, Mr. Thacker led the development of Firefly (the first multiprocessor workstation), the Alpha Demonstration Unit, the first Alpha system, and the AN1 and AN2 networks, precursors of Digital's Gigaswitch/ATM products. Before joining Digital, he spent 13 years at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he was responsible for the development of a number of experimental computer systems including Alto, the first personal workstation. He is a co-inventor of the Ethernet local area network and holds over 20 patents in computer architecture and networking. Mr. Thacker is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 267
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 268
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 269
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 270
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 271
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 272
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
×
Page 273
Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $67.00 Buy Ebook | $54.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

The past 50 years have witnessed a revolution in computing and related communications technologies. The contributions of industry and university researchers to this revolution are manifest; less widely recognized is the major role the federal government played in launching the computing revolution and sustaining its momentum. Funding a Revolution examines the history of computing since World War II to elucidate the federal government's role in funding computing research, supporting the education of computer scientists and engineers, and equipping university research labs. It reviews the economic rationale for government support of research, characterizes federal support for computing research, and summarizes key historical advances in which government-sponsored research played an important role.

Funding a Revolution contains a series of case studies in relational databases, the Internet, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality that demonstrate the complex interactions among government, universities, and industry that have driven the field. It offers a series of lessons that identify factors contributing to the success of the nation's computing enterprise and the government's role within it.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!