Jan Rajchman

Jan A. Rajchman (born August 10, 1911 in London , † April 1, 1989 ) was an American electrical engineer.

Rajchman's father was a doctor and in medical research. At the age of seven, he and his parents moved to Poland's homeland and three years later to Geneva. After graduating from the Collège de Genéve in 1930, he studied electrical engineering at the ETH Zurich , graduating in 1935 and gaining his doctorate in 1938. He moved to the USA in 1935 to work at the RCA laboratories, but initially couldn't find a job because of the Great Depression and could take summer courses of MIT. In August he became a test engineer at RCA and from January 1936 he was in the laboratory of Vladimir Zworykin at RCA, with whom he worked for many years.

For his dissertation he increased the sensitivity of electronic photo amplifiers. He recognized the possibility of electronic computers early on and from 1939 on he developed logic circuits and special tubes for arithmetic tasks and developed a matrix of resistors that was used as ROM memory in many early computers.

During World War II he worked on betatron and microwave devices, for which he received the Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1947.

After the war he worked on electronic computers again and developed a digital RAM memory in the form of a tube (Selectively addressable storage tube, Selectron ). Then he turned to magnetic core memories and related electronics and was one of the pioneers in the field. Among other things, he invented the Transfluxor and memory with ferrite cores.

In 1959 he became deputy research director at RCA Labs, in 1961 director of the Computer Research Laboratory and in 1967 vice president for data processing and later for information technology. In 1973 he led the development of the first holographic computer memory. He not only led research at the RCA laboratories in Princeton (David Sarnoff Research Center), but also in Tokyo and Zurich. In 1976 he retired.

In 1960 he received the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award for the development of magnetic devices for information processing (laudation). In 1974 he received the IEEE Edison Medal for his creative career in the development of electronics and as a pioneer of computer memory (laudation). In 1977 he received the Harold Pender Award . He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Franklin Institute. He held over 100 US patents.

He was married to the lawyer Ruth Teitrick and had two children with her.

Web links

• Engineering Technology History Wiki