Harry Huskey

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Huskey in 2011 with his second wife Nancy
Huskey in 1964 in India

Harry Douglas Huskey (born January 19, 1916 in the Smoky Mountains , North Carolina , † April 9, 2017 in Santa Cruz , California ) was an American mathematician and computer engineer .

Huskey grew up in Idaho and studied mathematics at Ohio State University , where he received his doctorate in 1943 under Tibor Radó . He taught mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and worked in 1945 with the early ENIAC computer, EDVAC and, on a visit to England, with the pilot ACE by Alan Turing .

With this experience he developed from 1949 to 1953 at the National Bureau of Standards to Los Angeles computer SWAC ( English Standards Western Automatic Computer ), an early tube computer . After its completion in 1950, the SWAC was the fastest computer in the world for a year and, with modifications , was in operation at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) until 1967 .

In 1954 Huskey became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley . In Berkeley, Huskey developed the G15 computer, manufactured and sold by Bendix Aviation Corporation, which is sometimes considered to be the first personal computer - Huskey himself had a copy at home. In 1966 he moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz . In 1986 he retired.

From 1963 to 1964 he was involved in setting up the computer science department at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and taught in New Delhi . His graduate students at Berkeley included Butler Lampson and Niklaus Wirth .

In 1982 he received the Computer Pioneer Award . Since 1994 he has been a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery . In 2013 he became a Fellow of the Computer History Museum .

He was married to Velma Roeth (she died in 1991), with whom he had four children. With her he also wrote essays on computer history. Since 1994 he was married to Nancy Grindstaff, who died in 2016. He last lived in Santa Cruz , California .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harry Douglas Huskey . Mathematics Genealogy Project , accessed April 12, 2017.
  2. ↑ Niklaus Wirth in: Orden pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 1842-2002 , Bleicher Verlag, Gerlingen, 2002, ISBN 3-88350-175-1
personal data
SURNAME Huskey, Harry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huskey, Harry Douglas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Smoky Mountains , North Carolina
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 2017
Place of death Santa Cruz , California