Everything about Herman Goldstine totally explained
Herman Heine Goldstine (
September 13,
1913 –
June 16,
2004),
mathematician,
computer scientist and
scientific administrator, was a one of the original developers of
ENIAC, the first of the modern electronic digital computers.
Personal life
Herman Heine Goldstine was born in Chicago in 1913. He attended the
University of Chicago, graduating
Phi Beta Kappa with a degree Mathematics in
1933, a master's degree in 1934 and a PhD. in
1936. For three years he was a research assistant under
Gilbert Ames Bliss, an authority on the mathematical theory of
exterior ballistics. In
1939 Goldstine began a teaching career at the
University of Michigan, until the
United States' entry into
World War II when he joined the Army. In 1941 he married
Adele Katz who was an
ENIAC programmer and wrote the technical description for ENIAC. He had a daughter and a son with Adele who died in
1964. Two years later he married
Ellen Watson.
In retirement Goldstine became executive director of the
American Philosophical Society in
Philadelphia between 1985 and 1997 where he was able to attract many prestigious visitors and speakers.
Goldstine died on
June 16,
2004 at his home in
Bryn Mawr,
Pennsylvania. His death was announced by the
Thomas J. Watson Research Center in
Yorktown Heights,
New York where a
postdoctoral fellowship was renamed in his honor.
BRL and the Moore School
As a result of the United States' entering
World War II, Goldstine left the
University of Michigan where he was a professor in July,
1942 to enlist in the Army. He was commissioned a
lieutenant and worked as an ordnance mathematician calculating
firing tables at the
Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at
Aberdeen Proving Ground,
Maryland. The firing tables were used in battle to find the appropriate
elevation and
azimuth for aiming artillery, which had a range of several miles.
The firing table calculations were accomplished by about one hundred women operating
mechanical desk calculators. Each combination of gun, round and geographical region required a unique set of firing tables. It took about 750 calculations to compute a single trajectory and each table had about 3,000 trajectories. It took one of these people—known, ironically, as
computers—about 12 days to compute one trajectory, and more than four years to compute a table. To increase production, BRL enlisted the computing facilities of the
Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Pennsylvania and Goldstine was the liaison between BRL and the university.
The ENIAC
While making some adjustments to the Moore School's
differential analyzer, engineer
Joseph Chapline suggested Goldstine visit
John Mauchly, a physics instructor at the Moore School, who had distributed a memorandum proposing that the calculations could be done thousands of times faster with an electronic computer using
vacuum tubes. Mauchly wrote a proposal and in June
1943 he and Goldstine secured funding from the Army for the project. The ENIAC was built in 30 months with 200,000 man hours. The ENIAC was huge, measuring 30 by 60 feet and weighing 30 tons with 18,000
vacuum tubes. The device could only store 20 numbers and took days to program. It was completed in late
1945 as
World War II was coming to an end.
The EDVAC
In spite of disappointment that ENIAC hadn't contributed to the war effort, interest remained strong in the Army to develop an electronic computer. Prior even to the ENIAC's completion, the Army procured a second contract from the Moore School to build a successor machine known as the
EDVAC. Goldstine, Mauchly,
J. Presper Eckert and
Arthur Burks began to study the development of the new machine in the hopes of correcting the deficiencies of the ENIAC.
Meeting von Neumann
In the summer of 1944 Goldstine had a chance encounter with the prominent mathematician
John von Neumann on a railway platform in
Aberdeen,
Maryland where Goldstine described his project at University of Pennsylvania. Unknown to Goldstine, von Neumann was working on the top secret
Manhattan Project that was building the first
atomic bomb. The calculations needed for this project were also daunting.
The First Draft
As a result of the conversations with Goldstine, von Neumann joined the study group and wrote a memo called
First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. Von Neumann intended this to be a memo to the study group, but Goldstine typed it up into a 101 page document that listed von Neumann as the sole author. On June 25,
1946, Goldstine forwarded 24 copies of the document to those intimitely involved in the EDVAC project; dozens or perhaps hundreds of mimeographs of the report were forwarded to von Neumann's colleagues at universities in the U.S. and in
England in the weeks that followed. While incomplete, the paper was very well received and became a blueprint for building electronic digital computers. Due to von Neuman's prominence as a major American mathematician the EDVAC architecture became known as the
von Neumann architecture.
One of the key ideas was that the computer would store a program in its electronic memory rather than programming the computer using mechanical switches and patch cables. This, and other ideas in the paper had been discussed in the EDVAC study group before Von Neumann joined the group. The fact that other members of the group were not listed as authors created resentment that led to the group's dissolution at the end of the war.
Eckert and Mauchly went on to form the
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, a company that in part survives today as the
Unisys Corporation, while von Neumann, Goldstine and Burks went on to academic life at the
Institute for Advanced Study. In Summer 1946, all of them reunited to give presentations at the first computer course, which has come to be known as the
Moore School Lectures; Goldstine's presentations, given without notes, covered deeply and rigorously numerical mathematical methods useful in programs for digital computers.
Institute for Advanced Study
After
World War II Goldstine joined von Neumann and Burks at the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton University where they built a computer referred to as the
IAS machine. Goldstine was appointed assistant director of the project and director after
1954.
The IAS machine influenced the design of
IBMs early computers, through von Neumann who was a consultant to IBM. When von Neumann died in
1958, the IAS computer project terminated. Goldstine went on to become the founding director of the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
IBM
At IBM one of Goldstine's most significant roles was in fostering relations between IBM researchers and the academic community. In
1969 he was appointed an
IBM Fellow, the company's most prestigious technical honor, and a consultant to the director of research. As a fellow Goldstine developed an interest in the history of computing and mathematical sciences. He wrote three books on the topic;
The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann,
History of Numerical Analysis from the 16th Through the 19th Century and
History of the Calculus of Variations from the Seventeenth Through the Nineteenth Century. As the title implies, in
The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Goldstine leaves little doubt that in his opinion von Neumann played a critical role in developing modern theories of computing.
Awards and honoraria
Publications
Arthur W. (Arthur Walter) Burks, Herman Heine Goldstine, John Von Neumann; Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computer Instrument; (Institute for Advanced Study, January 1, 1946) ASIN B0007HW8WE
References and external links
Herman Goldstine, Who Helped Build First Computers, Dies at 90
(Wolfgang Saxon, New York Times, 26 June 2004)
Herman Goldstine obituary
Biographical memoir for American Philosophical Society
IBM Research names mathematics fellowship for computer pioneer Herman Goldstine
Further Information
Get more info on 'Herman Goldstine'.
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