Goldstine, Herman H.

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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b. 13 September 1913 USA

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American mathematician largely responsible for the development of ENIAC, an early electronic computer.

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Goldstine studied mathematics at the University of Chicago, Illinois, gaining his PhD in 1936. After teaching mathematics there, he moved to a similar position at the University of Michigan in 1939, becoming an assistant professor. After the USA entered the Second World War, in 1942 he joined the army as a lieutenant in the Ballistic Missile Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. He was then assigned to the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was involved with Arthur Burks in building the valve-based Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) to compute ballistic tables. The machine was completed in 1946, but prior to this Goldstine had met John von Neumann of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Princeton, New Jersey, and active collaboration between them had already begun. After the war he joined von Neumann as Assistant Director of the Computer Project at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton, becoming its Director in 1954. There he developed the idea of computer-flow diagrams and, with von Neumann, built the first computer to use a magnetic drum for data storage. In 1958 he joined IBM as Director of the Mathematical Sciences Department, becoming Director of Development at the IBM Data Processing Headquarters in 1965. Two years later he became a Research Consultant, and in 1969 he became an IBM Research Fellow.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Goldstine's many awards include three honorary degrees for his contributions to the development of computers.

Bibliography

1946, with A.Goldstine, "The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)", Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation 2:97 (describes the work on ENIAC).

1946, with A.W.Burks and J.von Neumann, "Preliminary discussions of the logical design of an electronic computing instrument", Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies.

1972, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Princeton University Press.

1977, "A brief history of the computer", Proceedings of the American Physical Society 121:339.

Further Reading

M.Campbell-Kelly \& M.R.Williams (eds), 1985, The Moore School Lectures (1946), Charles Babbage Institute Report Series for the History of Computing, Vol 9. M.R.Williams, 1985, History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.

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