[SIGCIS-Members] Request for biographies

Thu Sep 3 12:12:40 PDT 2020

An important point I forgot to mention is that the Claude Shannon book
shows the important connection of Shannon and Vannevar Bush - Bush
introduced Shannon to many key people, and was thus hugely responsible for
Shannon's impact on the world.  I will be anxious to read the Bush book's
perspective on this relationship, and about Bush's work with FDR.

Brian

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:49 AM Brian Berg <brianberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>
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