Informatics General: Difference between revisions

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Walter F. Bauer (1924–2015),<ref name="legacy-bauer"/> the main founder of Informatics, was from Michigan and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the [[University of Michigan]] in 1951.<ref name="yost-it-208"/> His early work was at the [[Michigan Aeronautical Research Center]]; the [[National Bureau of Standards]], where he programmed the [[SEAC (computer)|early digital SEAC computer]]; and for Boeing's [[CIM-10 Bomarc|BOMARC interceptor missile]].<ref name="yost-it-208"/> He became a manager at the [[Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation]] in charge of a unit with 400 employees and two computers, an [[IBM 704]] and a [[UNIVAC 1103A]], and in 1958 joined the merged [[TRW Inc.|Thompson Ramo Wooldridge]] company.<ref name="bauer-oh-2-4-5"/><ref name="yost-it-208"/> Bauer later said that he "was never a green eyeshade programmer" nor a "strong technologist", but being a systems person and a manager gave him a good grasp of computer systems and their capabilities.<ref name="bauer-oh-2-5"/><ref name="yost-it-208">Yost, ''Making IT Work'', p. 108.</ref>

Another key founder was Werner L. Frank (1929–),<ref name="yost-wf">Yost, "Werner Frank".</ref> who during 1954–55 had done programming work on the [[ILLIAC I]] at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign]].<ref>Frank, "Achieving the American Dream", pp. 33–34.</ref> He was then recruited by Bauer and joined Ramo-Wooldridge in 1955, where he did [[numerical analysis]] and programming in [[assembly language]] and [[FORTRAN]].<ref>Frank, "Achieving the American Dream", pp. 33–36.</ref> Working with pioneers of [[scientific computing]] such as [[David M. Young, Jr.]] and [[George Forsythe]], Frank published several important articles on numerical analysis in ''[[Journal of the ACM]]'' and other publications.<ref>Frank, "Achieving the American Dream", pp. 36–37.</ref> By 1958, Ramo-Wooldridge had been acquired by Thompson Products, Inc. and becomecome to be known as [[TRW Inc.]]; Frank then did early programming on several defense industry computers, including the [[AN/UYK-1]], and spent long stretches of time in [[Washington, D.C.]]<ref>Frank, "Achieving the American Dream", pp. 38–39.</ref>

The third founder was another TRW colleague, Richard H. Hill, who had been a professor at [[UCLA]] and an assistant director of a joint data center between that university and [[IBM]].<ref name="yost-wf"/><ref name="yost-it-109">Yost, ''Making IT Work'', p. 109.</ref>