[SIGCIS-Members] Request for biographies

Thu Sep 3 11:49:40 PDT 2020

I loved *A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_at_Play>* by Jimmy Soni and Rob
Goodman.

I got inspired to read it after seeing *The Bit Player* - a film that I
described in a posting to this list on Aug. 3, 2019.  I have now seen it a
second time at the Ashland, Oregon Independent Film Festival which was
online this year.  After the screening, the 2 authors and the filmmaker
were part of an online interactive chat that was partly similar to the live
discussion following the screening a year ago.  It was great to see the
film both before and after reading the book.  A good friend (Alex Magoun)
who is on the IEEE History Committee is credited in the Acknowledgments
section with helping the book editing process "immeasurably."

I also thoroughly enjoyed Leslie Berlin's Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's
Coming of Age
<https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Troublemakers/Leslie-Berlin/9781451651515>
which
profiles 7 key people.  It bounces around re: their contributions as time
progresses in the book from the 1970s until the early 1980s.  Like the
Robert Noyce bio by her noted earlier in this thread, it was well
researched and fun to read.  I was delighted when an event that I organized
about the history of Atari was attended by her and included in a couple of
the book's entries about Al Alcorn.  Two of the seven who are profiled are
women: Sandra Kurtzig <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Kurtzig>, the
first woman to take a technology company public, and that company (ASK
Group) was the first to truly productize software; and Fawn Alvarez
<https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4796871/rolm-fawn-alvarez>, who rose from
the ROLM factory line to its executive suite.

BTW, a good resource for finding old books like these is abebooks.com - I
just ordered a copy of the Vannevar Bush book discussed earlier in this
thread.

Also, here is what I posted to this list last year after seeing the Claude
Shannon film for the first time:
I saw a screening last night of *The Bit Player* at the Computer History
Museum (CHM) in Mtn. View, CA USA.  It was quite an impressive film.
Interviews with Shannon, including an extensive one in the early 1980s at
his home, formed the basis of much of the film by way of a key one being
reproduced using actors.  John Hutton played Shannon - he has extensive
acting chops on stage (including as King Lear; some info here
<https://cupresents.org/2016/02/24/john-hutton-returns-csf/>) and on film
(various, including a small part in Spielberg's *Lincoln* as Massachusetts
Senator Charles Sumner).  It was a brilliant way to tell Shannon's story as
it portrayed his in-person eccentricities - and there is no significant
actual footage of this aspect of Shannon.  This was accompanied by
interesting animations and discussion of his seminal paper and famous
Master's thesis in order to convey the gravity of his importance, along
with portions of the 1952 “Theseus” Maze-Solving Mouse film
<http://cyberneticzoo.com/mazesolvers/1952-%E2%80%93-theseus-maze-solving-mouse-%E2%80%93-claude-shannon-american/>.
The film was concluded with just-discovered brief footage of Shannon
juggling on a unicycle - that was fantastic to see!

More info, presented in an excellent and sophisticated fashion, is at
www.TheBitPlayer.com <http://www.thebitplayer.com/>  The panel who
discussed the film after the screening (including Writer/Producer/Director
Mark Levinson) noted that there would be a screening of the film in San
Francisco in September.  I do not know where else it will be shown in the
future.  The website shows the CHM screening as the film's third.  It's the
quality of film that I could easily and eagerly watch a second time even as
soon as next month.  Do study the website as it is brilliantly executed.

This was the first documentary film funded by the IEEE Foundation, and it
was done in conjunction with the IEEE Information Theory Society (ITS).
BTW, the ITS is the only IEEE society whose "basis" has a definitive
starting date - the 1948 publication of Shannon's *A Mathematical Theory of
Communication
<http://math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf>*
.
_________________________
Brian A. Berg / bberg at StanfordAlumni.org
Berg Software Design - LinkedIn Profile
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianaberg/>
14500 Big Basin Way, Suite F, Saratoga, CA 95070 USA
Voice: 408.741.5010 / Cell: 408.568.2505
Consulting: Flash Memory/USB/Storage/Patents
visit the Storage Cornucopia: www.bswd.com
FMS Technical Chair: www.FlashMemorySummit.com
IEEE Milestone
<http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:List_of_IEEE_Milestones>
Coordinator & History Chair for Region 6 <http://www.ieee-region6.org/>
IEEE SCV Section <http://www.ieee.org/scv/> Past Chair / IEEE-CNSV
<http://www.CaliforniaConsultants.org> Board Director
IEEE Silicon Valley Tech History Committee
<http://www.SiliconValleyHistory.com/> Chair

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:17 AM Jeffrey Yost <yostx003 at umn.edu> wrote:

> Hi Troy,
>
> Bill Aspray's *John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing*, a
> deeply insightful and path breaking work of scholarship, in large part a
> biography, and much more. Andrew Hodges *Alan Turing: The Enigma*.
> Leslie Berlin's *The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the
> Invention of Silicon Valley* is a great bio on this influential
> physicist, engineer, and entrepreneur in IT.  (And sticking with  the
> Fairchild, Intel and Silicon Valley theme...) Arnold Thackray, David Brock,
> and Rachel Jones' *Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon
> Valley's Quiet Revolutionary*.   Agree what others have said on Waldrop's *The
> Dream Machine*, an excellent book by this top science journalist. And I
> very highly recommend Hunter's excellent biography on Herbert Simon.
>
> Best, Jeff
>
>
>   The Man behind the Microchip : Robert Noyce and the Invention of
> Silicon Valley
> *"Injustice wears the same harsh face wherever it shows itself."*-Ralph
> Ellison
>
> Jeffrey R. Yost, Ph.D.
> Director, Charles Babbage Institute
> Research Professor, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and
> Medicine
>
> 222  21st Avenue South
> University of Minnesota
> Minneapolis, MN 55455
>
> 612 624 5050 Phone
> 612 625 8054 Fax
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 6:31 AM Troy Astarte <Troy.Astarte at newcastle.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear SIG-CIS,
>>
>> What is your favourite biography of a scientist or mathematician? I’m
>> particularly interested in modern subjects and those who worked in
>> computing/computer science. Ideally the book would cover the subject’s work
>> in a reasonable level of technical detail as well as their life and the
>> broader context in which they lived and worked.
>>
>> I ask because I am considering applying for funding for an essentially
>> biographical project on a computer scientist and I would like to read some
>> (more) biographies first.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Troy Astarte
>>
>> School of Computing
>> Newcastle University
>>
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