Who could have murdered billionaire Barry Sherman and wife Honey, two of Canada’s leading philanthropists? – Part 1: the brand-name drug companies

Who murdered Canadian billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife Honey in December 2017?

Police do not have an answer.

The couple were found dead in their mansion in Toronto, Canada, on Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. By the next day, media reports said that their bodies were discovered “hanging side by side” next to the indoor swimming pool, by Judi Gottlieb, a real estate agent and the couple’s friend who was helping them sell their home, which was listed on the market for $6.9 million. A police source told the media:

“Forensics need to be done and post-mortems on the bodies, but at this stage it appears there was no forced entry and no evidence of anybody else in the house”.

(“Billionaire Couple Found Dead in Toronto Mansion”, by Tom Ozimek, December 16, 2017, The Epoch Times)

Oddly, police initially referred to the deaths as a “medial incident”, describing them as “suspicious” but did not call them homicides:

“Two bodies were found at 50 Old Colony Road in the North York area of the Canadian city on Friday after police received a call around 11:45 a.m. detailing a medical incident at the home, Toronto Police Constable David Hopkinson said at a press conference Friday afternoon.

Investigators described the deaths as “suspicious” but said it is too early to deem them homicides, Hopkinson said. The homicide unit has not yet been called in, he added.”

(“Billionaire Barry Sherman, wife found dead in their Toronto mansion, officials say”, by Julia Jacobo, December 16, 2017, ABC News)

Though police initially did not disclose the identities of the deceased, the Shermans’ deaths were immediately confirmed by Dr. Eric Hoskins, the province of Ontario’s Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, on Twitter. Hoskins described Barry and Honey Sherman as “my dear friends”:

“I am beyond words right now. My dear friends Barry and Honey Sherman have been found dead. Wonderful human beings, incredible philanthropists, great leaders in health care. A very, very sad day. Barry, Honey, rest in peace.”

(Julia Jacobo, December 16, 2017, ABC News)

In that evening also on Twitter, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed condolences by him and wife Sophie to the Shermans’ family and friends:

“Sophie and I are saddened by news of the sudden passing of Barry and Honey Sherman. Our condolences to their family & friends, and to everyone touched by their vision & spirit.”

(Julia Jacobo, December 16, 2017, ABC News)

Barry and Honey Sherman had played a prominent local role in Toronto supporting the ultimately successful election campaign of the Canadian Liberal Party, hosting a $1,500 per person fundraising party for then party leader Trudeau on August 26, 2015 at their home – the very house where they were later found dead in 2017 – despite boycott and protest by some of their Jewish community friends opposing the Liberal Party’s policies on Iran:

“About 30 protesters from the Jewish Defence League lined the street out front of Sherman’s lavish north Toronto home, holding Israeli and Canadian flags.

“Enjoy the food,” a man holding an Israeli flag yelled as guests walked up the driveway, past a line of valets. Tickets for the party and opportunity to meet leader Justin Trudeau reportedly went for $1,500 each.

One guest stopped and smiled at a protester in the picket line. “Joel? What are you doing here?”

The protester, Joel Goldman, said he was there because he didn’t support the Liberals’ position on the Iran nuclear deal.

“They’re just coming to see Mick Jagger tonight,” Goldman said after his friend went inside. “They’re coming to see a rock star.”

…

The Liberals have pledged to reopen diplomatic ties with Iran and have welcomed the new Iranian nuclear deal.”

(“Justin Trudeau fundraiser picketed by Jewish group over Liberals’ support for Iran nuclear deal”, by Jake Edmiston, August 26/27, 2015, National Post)

Two days after the deaths were discovered, on December 17 police confirmed the identities of the deceased in a statement that also corroborated earlier media reports of hanging, describing the cause of deaths as “ligature neck compression”, stating that homicide detectives had now taken the lead in the investigation:

“Police issued a brief statement on Sunday saying the couple, whose bodies were found on Friday, both died from “ligature neck compression,” but the department refused to comment further.

“That is what the post-mortem indicates and that is the terminology that they give us,” Const. Michelle Flannery said when asked to elaborate on findings from autopsies performed over the weekend.

Police also said homicide detectives have taken the lead on investigating the deaths, which have been classified as “suspicious.”

The statement contained no other details, except to formally identify the Shermans as the two people found dead in a Toronto home on Friday.”

(“Police are investigating the ‘suspicious’ deaths of Toronto billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman”, by Adrian Humphreys and Jake Edmiston, December 15/17, 2017, National Post)

A Toronto Police source told The Globe and Mail that “investigators are working on the theory that Mr. Sherman killed his wife, hung her body and then hanged himself at the pool’s edge”, citing the fact that there was no sign of forced entry into the house:

“A Toronto police source told the Globe investigators are working on the theory that Mr. Sherman killed his wife and then took his own life.

…

Police services spokesman Mark Pugash would not confirm details of the case, only stating the homicide squad is in overall charge of the investigation because it has better resources than the local police station, 33 Division.

“Homicide is working with 33 Division on this until we get the post mortem. When we get the post-mortem result, that should give us a good indication of where the investigation goes from there,” he told The Globe.

There was no sign of forced entry to the home. There was no note left behind to explain what had happened, the source said.”

(“Family urges ‘thorough’ investigation into deaths of Apotex CEO Barry Sherman, wife Honey”, by Tavia Grant, Kelly Grant and Jeff Gray, December 16/17, 2017, The Globe and Mail)

The Sherman family members were outraged by the media-reported police notion of “murder-suicide”, rejecting it in a statement issued by the four children of Barry and Honey Sherman:

“The family of Canadian-Jewish billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman, found dead at their home in Toronto on Friday, have slammed the police for allegedly circulating rumors that their death was a murder-suicide.

…

In a statement, the family rejected the account – attributed to “police sources” in the local media – that Barry Sherman may have murdered his wife, hanged her body and then himself from a railing that surrounded their basement pool.

The Shermans’ four children said their parents “shared an enthusiasm for life and commitment to their family and community totally inconsistent with the rumors regrettably circulated in the media as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths.”

They added: “We are shocked and think it’s irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true.”

(“As Canada’s Jewish Community Mourns, Sherman Family Slams Police for ‘Murder-suicide’ Rumor”, by Allison Kaplan Sommer and Reuters, December 19, 2017, Haaretz)

The Sherman family hired experts, including former Toronto Police homicide detectives, to conduct a independent investigation. In late January 2018, a source with direct knowledge of the private probe told the media that the probe found evidence of the Sherman couple having been murdered by “multiple killers”, likely on December 13, the last day they were seen alive:

“Private investigators believe that the billionaire Toronto couple found dead at their home in December were murdered by multiple killers, a source with direct knowledge of the parallel probe into their mysterious deaths told CBC Toronto.

The new information contradicts a widely circulated theory that Barry and Honey Sherman died as a result of a murder-suicide — a notion that is regarded as fiction by those who knew the Shermans well.

…

The Sherman family has hired a team of experts, which includes a number of former Toronto homicide detectives, to conduct a separate, independent investigation.

…

Their wrists showed evidence that they had been, at one point, bound together. No rope or other materials that could have been used to tie their wrists were discovered, the source told CBC Toronto.

…

The team of private investigators believes that the Shermans were, in fact, killed on Dec. 13, two days before they were found. This conclusion is based on the fact that Honey was wearing the same clothes she was last seen in, on Dec. 13, according to the source.

Private investigators also believe that Honey struggled with her killer or killers. She had cuts on her lip and nose, and was sitting in a pool of her own blood when she was discovered. …”

(“Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered by multiple killers, private investigators believe: source”, January 20/23, 2018, CBC News)

Only after media reporting of the private investigation findings did the Toronto Police confirm that the deaths were now being investigated as a “double homicide”, and a “targeted” attack. The Sherman family issued a statement saying that this was the family’s conclusion “from the outset” and was “consistent” with the private investigation’s findings:

“Toronto police believe Barry and Honey Sherman were victims of a targeted attack and are treating their deaths as murders, the lead investigator said Friday afternoon.

…

The Sherman family released a statement after the police news conference.

“The announcement by the Toronto Police Service that the tragic deaths of their parents are being investigated as a double homicide was anticipated by the Sherman family,” the statement read. “This conclusion was expressed by the family from the outset and is consistent with the findings of the independent autopsy and investigation.”

(“Double homicide investigation: Barry and Honey Sherman ‘targeted’, police confirm”, by Kevin Donovan, January 26, 2018, The Hamilton Spectator)

So who were billionaire Barry Sherman and wife Honey, a wealthy and prominent Canadian couple who met such a brutal and indignant end?

75-year-old Barry Sherman was the founder and owner of the Canadian pharmaceutical giant Apotex Inc., which he founded in 1974 and grew into the largest Canadian-owned pharmaceutical company, producing and marketing more than 300 generic drug products.

According to the December 2017 National Post story by Adrian Humphreys and Jake Edmiston cited earlier, Canadian Business magazine had recently assessed Sherman’s fortune at $4.77 billion CAD, ranking him the 15th richest in Canada. The earlier-cited December 2017 Haaretz story by Allison Kaplan Sommer reported Forbes magazine’s ranking of Sherman as the 12th richest Canadian and 660th among the world’s wealthiest billionaires.

But in reporting their deaths, the media emphasized the praises given to the Shermans by prominent politicians and community leaders, for their renowned generosity – “incredible philanthropists” as Ontario Health Minister Hoskins was quoted as saying.

Canadian Senator Linda Frum, a family friend of the Shermans, said of Barry Sherman the businessman and philanthropist:

“He liked to make money because he loved giving money away — and he did, he gave away very generously”.

(Adrian Humphreys and Jake Edmiston, December 15/17, 2017, National Post)

70-year-old Honey Sherman was a board member of several notable non-profit organizations, including the York University Foundation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Their deaths were a devastating loss to both the Jewish community and the broader community in Toronto because the couple were “among the most active and generous philanthropists”, said Senator Frum: 

“The Jewish community and the broader community in Toronto are going to be devastated by this loss because they were among the most active and generous philanthropists. For them, community involvement wasn’t just about giving their money, they took a profound and deep interest in almost every institution and organization they supported”.

(Adrian Humphreys and Jake Edmiston, December 15/17, 2017, National Post)

Indeed, Toronto’s Jewish community was stunned by the Shermans’ deaths. Flags were lowered to half-mast at Toronto’s Sherman Campus, which houses a United Jewish Appeal Federation headquarters, a Jewish community center, the community’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Jewish family services and other agencies.

Eli Rubenstein, national director of March of the Living Canada, described the Shermans as “among the leading philanthropists in Canada”, maybe “the most generous” and “definitely among the most generous”:

“The Shermans are among the leading philanthropists in Canada. They may be the most generous in the country, and definitely among the most generous”.

(Allison Kaplan Sommer and Reuters, December 19, 2017, Haaretz)

Rubenstein noted that in addition to their donations to Jewish charities, the couple supported a “host of universal causes”, especially “Holocaust education” because Honey Sherman had been born in a European displaced persons camp to parents who had survived the Holocaust.

(Allison Kaplan Sommer and Reuters, December 19, 2017, Haaretz)

According to an August 2017 story in The Canadian Jewish News, Barry Sherman had donated a record amount of $50 million to the United Jewish Appeal, his Apotex Foundation had donated more than $50 million worth of medicines internationally in the past 10 years, and he was proud that Apotex was “recognized as the No. 1 pharmaceutical company in Canada for total corporate donations”:

“Over the years, Sherman has demonstrated that community is as important to him as success in business. He has been a community leader and shared his wealth generously with the community. He is a major contributor to Jewish organizations, including the UJA – to which he has donated a recorded amount of $50 million – and the Joint Distribution Committee.

He and his wife, Honey, have donated millions to medical research and health-care facilities – including an important addition to Baycrest – and community centres in Toronto and elsewhere.

Sherman also gives through his company, Apotex, and the Apotex Foundation. “One of our major community contributions are to the United Way,” Sherman states on the Apotex website. “We are proud to be recognized as the No. 1 pharmaceutical company in Canada for total corporate donations, being one of the few companies in the country to raise over $1 million.”

The Apotex Foundation is a privately held charitable organization, which has donated more than $50 million in medicines over the last 10 years. Critical medicines have been shipped to every disaster zone around the globe to provide assistance to humans in need.”

(“Barry Sherman ranks High both in wealth and philanthropy”, by Myron Love, August 19, 2017, The Canadian Jewish News)

The Shermans’ “legacy of giving and selfless dedication” was also the focus of their public funeral in December 2017, which was “attended by more than 6,500 and live-streamed”, including many of the business and political elite.

(“The other side of Barry Sherman”, by Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

Prime Minister Trudeau, Senator Frum, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Ontario Health Minister Hoskins and Toronto Mayor John Tory were among the attendees. In her eulogy, Premier Wynne urged all to follow the example of the Shermans’, who had been “full of compassion, hope and generosity”:

“Wynne urged mourners to follow the Shermans’ example: “May we all be inspired to live as they did. Full of compassion, hope and generosity.””

(“‘Painful and so bizarrely surreal’: Thousands mourn deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman”, by Andrea Janus and Nick Boisvert, December 21, 2017, CBC News

In their eulogies, Sherman family members and friends, including Senator Frum and Mayor Tory, reminisced about the couple’s generosity, like Mary Shechtman recalled about her sister Honey, “She wanted to give everything to everybody”:

“Tory told mourners he was “profoundly saddened” by the deaths of the Shermans, and paid tribute to their dedication to bettering their city, and their country.

Long before he was in politics, Tory would ask the couple for support for various charitable projects, “and rarely if ever went away without some support,” he said.

…

Joel Ulster, who called himself Barry Sherman’s oldest friend, described him not only as “the smartest person, but much more importantly, he had the biggest heart.”

The Shermans not only gave millions to charities, he noted, they also helped many people quietly and privately, he said.

“Our hearts are broken.”

Sen. Linda Frum, said it was “a privilege” to call the Shermans friends, and reminisced about Honey Sherman’s kindness. …

“It was easy to love Honey and everybody did.”

Honey Sherman’s sister, Mary Shechtman, tearfully recalled how her relationship with her sister was marked by two favourite things: laughing and shopping.

…

“She just wanted to make everybody happy,” Shechtman said through tears. “She wanted to give everything to everybody.””

(Andrea Janus and Nick Boisvert, December 21, 2017, CBC News)

At the funeral, the Shermans’ son Jonathan announced the creation of a new philanthropic foundation in their parents’ name: The Honey and Barry Foundation of Giving.

Such exemplary spirits of giving!

Shortly before their unexpected and shocking deaths, the Shermans had been prominently honoured by the Canadian parliament and government.

On November 29, Honey and Barry Sherman had been awarded a Senate 150 Anniversary Medal for their being “among Canada’s most generous philanthropists” – as a couple given one of “twelve medals to twelve individuals” awarded by Senator Frum.

(“Senate 150 Anniversary Medal”, November 29, 2017, Senator Linda Frum)

Also in November 2017, the Canadian government had made the decision to name Barry Sherman to the Order of Canada, with the appointment signed by Governor General Julie Payette before their deaths. That prior timing turned out to be necessary for this high honour to be bestowed posthumously:

“In a statement issued on Saturday evening, the family of Barry and Honey Sherman said that news that their late father has been appointed to the Order of Canada, which was made public on Friday, provides them some comfort during a “most difficult time.”

…

“To receive this honour posthumously speaks volumes about our father and confirms what we have always known, he was a true humanitarian and a great Canadian,” the statement from Sherman’s family reads. “We take comfort knowing that his countless contributions to healthcare and philanthropy have been memorialized in such an enduring manner.”

The Order of Canada cannot be awarded to someone after their death but the committee charged with deciding who gets the award actually granted it to Barry Sherman at a meeting in November and Governor General Julie Payette signed the appointment prior to his death.

In their statement, Sherman’s family note that the Order of Canada is “one of this nation’s highest honours.””

(“Family of Barry Sherman say Order of Canada appointment ‘speaks volumes’ about father”, by Chris Fox, December 30, 2017, CP24 News)

The Sherman family had reasons to be appreciative, or at least “take comfort” as they said, cited above. Had these Canadian official gestures not been made in November 2017, these two leading Canadian philanthropists would have forever missed the high and enduring national  honours several weeks later when their “targeted” double homicide occurred in December.

One cannot help but wonder: Who could have committed such a cruel and heinous crime? Who could have murdered the beloved Barry and Honey Sherman, who had been – as praised by Senator Linda Frum and Jewish community leader Eli Rubenstein – among “the leading philanthropists” and “the most active and generous philanthropists” in Canada?

According to a Maclean’s investigative article published in April 2018, police did not have an easy answer about this crime and were thus also looking into the broader circumstances:

“The ongoing investigation into the Shermans’ deaths now casts a harsher spotlight on their lives as police try to answer why the couple were victims of a “targeted” attack…”

(Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

The article mentioned the huge amount of police resources allocated to the case:

“… The mystery deepens as each day passes, with no arrests or known suspects. An affidavit filed in court by a Toronto police officer detailed resources being deployed: 51 officers working the case, combing through more than 2,000 hours of security footage, with “474 investigative actions” being “vigorously pursued,” 240 people interviewed or identified to be interviewed. More warrants and “covert tactics” to track down the killers are expected. …”

(Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

Intriguingly, when considering the broader, albeit hypothetical, question of “who could have murdered” the Shermans, it will become clear – as I review the relevant media coverage, past and present – that, despite all the high praises the couple have received, there have also been no shortage of persons and organizations that hated Barry Sherman.

The Maclean’s investigative article pointed out that two decades ago Sherman himself had said he could be a murder target for his work in the pharmaceutical industry, and that since then his list of enemies has grown even longer:

“Two decades ago, Sherman himself admitted he could be a target for murder. “For a thousand bucks paid to the right person, you can probably get someone killed. Perhaps I’m surprised that hasn’t happened,” he told author Jeffrey Robinson in the 2001 book Prescription Games: Money, Ego and Power Inside the Pharmaceutical Industry. After that, his list of adversaries only grew, as privately held Apotex expanded into more than 100 countries, including Mexico and India, and began developing a cannabis-based pill. …”

(Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

A paradoxical and unpleasant scenario to contemplate, that Sherman may have been a murder target for his work when his pharmaceutical company benefited people in so many countries.

A potential explanation is that, while he was adored by those close to him Barry Sherman was also loathed by others and was accused by some as “unethical in business dealings”, according to the Maclean’s article:

“… A renowned risk-taker, disruptor and pitbull professionally, Sherman was a polarizing figure—regarded as a softie with a heart of gold by those in his proximity and loathed by those who claim they were outfoxed or betrayed by him. The man who learned weeks before his death of his nomination to the Order of Canada was also called out as unethical in business dealings. …”

(Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

Hmm, so the Order of Canada was bestowed on a businessman who had been regarded as “a softie with a heart of gold” by some but had also been “called out as unethical in business dealings” by others, and who was soon murdered alongside his wife in what the police have called “a targeted attack”!

While such an alternative depiction would be unflattering of Sherman, interestingly in his eulogy at the Shermans’ funeral Apotex president and COO Jack Kay said something subtly that could be interpreted similarly, that Barry Sherman was “kind of a teddy bear in real life, but with a mind like a steel trap and the stubbornness of a bull”:

“Apotex president and COO Jack Kay, his voice breaking numerous times, reminisced about 35 years of both a business and personal relationship with Barry Sherman and his family. In 1982, Sherman interviewed Kay in Montreal for a vice-president’s job at Apotex, and ended their conversation by saying: “Come move to Toronto and we will build this company and have a lot of fun and make a lot of money.”

He noted Sherman’s vast intellect, devotion to hard work and love of his family and friends.

“Barry was just a regular guy,” Kay said. “He was kind of a teddy bear in real life, but with a mind like a steel trap and the stubbornness of a bull. He changed my life, and I’m so very grateful to have shared those years with him.””

(Andrea Janus and Nick Boisvert, December 21, 2017, CBC News)

Still, at first glance at the facts as recently reported in the media, it isn’t immediately obvious how unethical Sherman was in his pharmaceutical business practice, other than that he was a man in many legal disputes.

Sherman’s privately-owned Apotex has launched an astonishingly large number of lawsuits over the years, more than 1,200 in the Federal Court of Canada alone since 1990:

“Launched in 1974, it was a corporation in constant battle mode: against Big Pharma, against government regulators, against anyone who dared question the founder’s pure intentions. He touted himself as a patent-busting underdog, the courtroom crusader bravely suing the Mercks and Pfizers and Bayers of the world so he could provide needy patients with cheaper generics. “If we’re thieves, we’re Robin Hoods,” he once claimed. Winning in the courts was so crucial to his success that he liked to tell his employees they worked for a legal company that happened to sell medications.

Sherman railed against “incompetent” bureaucrats who had the audacity to disagree with his interpretations of federal drug law—and he dragged them to court, too. In Federal Court alone, Apotex has launched more than 1,200 legal actions, including 83 against Health Canada since 1990. A ministry spokesman says “because of the high volume of cases,” officials can’t even begin to calculate how many millions Sherman’s litigation has cost Canadian taxpayers. …”

(Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

As told above, Sherman prided himself and his company as “Robin Hoods” expanding the consumer reach of their cheaper generic drugs; he and his company were in “constant battle mode” using legal litigation as a mighty weapon, against Big Pharma – the international pharmaceutical giants that dwarf his Canadian generic drug company – government regulators, and anyone who dared to stand in their way.

Sherman’s litigations have cost Canadian taxpayers “many millions”, according to a government spokesman. But while that may have been true, from the standpoint of Barry Sherman and Apotex the many legal battles were a necessity.

When Sherman admitted he could be a murder target, as cited earlier from a Maclean’s investigative article, he did so to Jeffrey Robinson, author of the book Prescription Games: Money, Ego and Power inside the Global Pharmaceutical Industry, who interviewed him.

As excerpted from the 2001 book, an enormous amount of legal litigation is what a generic drug company had to endure to be successful because a generic drug is a “copycat” of a brand-name drug, the generic drug company must not infringe on existing drug patents and the determination is through legal battles:

“A generic drug is a copycat version of a branded drug, permitted to come onto the market as soon as the branded drug goes off patent, but only on the condition that the copycat is “bioequivalent” with the original, which means the generic version must be more than just a chemical copy. It has to be as safe and effective as the branded drug and act in exactly the same way. It must contain an identical amount of active ingredient and must be in the same dosage. A generic must also meet standards for “bioavailability,” meaning that it must deliver the same exact amount of the active ingredient into the bloodstream and in very nearly the exact same time, within a narrowly defined margin of difference.

…

Because the generic manufacturers have not had to undergo huge R&D expenses or vastly complicated clinical trials, building a generic costs considerably less than developing a branded drug. Where Merck may spend $300 million on researching and developing a drug, Apotex can get its generic version on the market for around $1 million.

But first the generic company has to get past the branded companies’ lawyers.”

(Jeffrey Robinson, Prescription Games: Money, Ego and Power inside the Global Pharmaceutical Industry, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

I find that author Jeffrey Robinson’s very precise definition of the technical requirements for a generic drug, quoted above, needs to be clarified, namely that in practice an Apotex generic drug may not necessarily contain “an identical amount of active ingredient” as the brand-name drug.

In the following example in a legal dispute between GlaxoSmithKline and Apotex in 2003, that Big Pharma company was unable to prove to the court that Apotex’s generic version of the brand-name drug Paxil actually contained sufficient amounts of the patented active ingredient:

“Barry Sherman, chief executive of privately held Apotex, said the company is “elated” with the ruling of the U.S. federal court in Chicago, but could not pinpoint a launch date for its version of Paxil.

…

Federal court Judge Richard Posner found that while Glaxo’s patent is valid, the Middlesex, England-based company could not prove that Apotex’s version contains sufficient amounts of patented active ingredient hemihydrate to constitute an infringement.

The ruling says TorPharm Pharmaceuticals did not infringe the Glaxo patent with its own drug. TorPharm is a subsidiary of Apotex Inc.

Glaxo said it would appeal while it continues to defend the Paxil patent in a separate case.”

(“Apotex wins dispute with Glaxo: Legal action over Paxil still pending”, by Michael Lewis, March 5, 2003, National Post)

Clearly, if a generic version did not contain sufficient amounts of a key active ingredient of a brand-name drug, the generic quite likely would not be as “effective as the branded drug”, let alone “act in exactly the same way” as stipulated in the earlier quote from Robinson’s book.

Also quoted in Robinson’s book, Barry Sherman extensively lamented about how difficult it was to invest in the health-care industry in Canada, pinpointing the main unfavourable factors as the anti-competitive government regulations and the brand-name drug companies’ “pseudogenerics”, as well as the brand-name drug companies’ legal tactics:

“The entire generic industry is, Sherman says with obvious frustration, “Unsustainable. The combination of the anti-competitive regulations and the pseudogenerics, those two factors make it impossible to continue to invest in the health-care industry in Canada. As a result of which, the monopolies will go on forever. No one will invest in new products because you won’t be able to get it onto the market.”

Pseudogenerics are the branded companies’ own drug, repackaged as a generic, brought to the market a few months before the generic company can launch its own version.

“Or they hang us up in court. … Whether you’re right or wrong, when you get to court it’s fifty-fifty. You’ve got a non-infringing process and they’ll get a Nobel laureate to swear that the moon is made of cheese. So even if you’ve got 99 per cent certainty that you’re not infringing, you know they’re going to sue you anyway and so you’re off the market for that period of time with no revenue to pay for the litigation. Under any normal scenario, you just launch the product, then you litigate, and if you lose at the end of the day you give up your profits. In this country it’s rigged against us. We have to carry all the expenses, have no sales to deduct that from, and if we’re stopped because the court rules against us, then we’ve lost all of our investment, not just the profit but all of our investment. And that means we can’t invest.””

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

I find it interesting that Sherman’s view of leading scientists was so unflattering, that the branded companies would get a Nobel laureate “to swear in court that the moon is made of cheese”, i.e., to speak totally without scientific integrity.

Here are some of my interpretations of Sherman’s words quoted above: one, upon the launch of a generic drug the company would be sued by the brand-name drug company regardless of whether patents were infringed, and so Sherman’s company chose to “just launch the product” first and then litigate; and, two, in Canada the “anti-competitive regulations” kept the generic drugs off the market during a legal dispute, and so his company also sued the government for that reason.

Barry Sherman sounded very competitive but not exactly “unethical”, or at least not like “a Nobel laureate” that he belittled.

Shortly after the Shermans’ murder, Amir Attaran, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa, disputed the public image of Barry Sherman and Apotex as legal fighters bringing cheaper drugs to Canadians. Generic drugs in Canada are among the most expensive generics in the world, according to Attaran:

““I think he was probably the most active litigant in any industry in Canada,” said Amir Attaran, a professor in the faculties of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa.

“I practise in Federal Court, and there’s no one else in Federal Court whose name is attached to more cases that I know of.”

…

“That’s how they spin it. He was always in court fighting for Canadians to get cheaper drugs,” Attaran said.

“That is outrageous fabrication. Because for all his efforts being the biggest generic drug company in Canada, having the greatest influence of any company in Canada over generic drugs, Canada pays among the highest prices in the world for generics. And that has been documented again and again.””

(“When it came to launching legal battles, Apotex founder Barry Sherman was ‘absolutely singular’”, by Victoria Gibson and Jacques Gallant, December 22, 2017, Toronto Star)

That public image was “outrageous fabrication” because “Canada pays among the highest prices in the world for generics. And that has been documented again and again.”

Now that begins to look not so ethical about Barry Sherman, i.e., fighting many legal battles to push his company’s generic drugs onto the market but not passing on the gains to the Canadian consumers – not a “Robin Hood” if Attaran’s view is right.

Attaran also called Sherman “unethical in business”:

“Apotex has been involved in more than a thousand court cases in Canada, using the legal system to aggressively challenge drug patents.

“It definitely makes it the most litigious pharma company in Canada and probably the most litigious company period,” says University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran.

“It’s fair to observe the way he did business he would have had many enemies,” he says.

Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the world for generic drugs, and Attaran argues Sherman’s business practices contributed to that.

“He was unethical in business. His drugs were overpriced and gouged Canadians,” he said on Twitter.

(“Barry and Honey Sherman: The mystery of the strangled billionaires”, by Jessica Murphy, February 4, 2018, BBC News)

As Attaran observed about Sherman in the above, “the way he did business he would have had many enemies”. This observation points to a possible connection between the Shermans’ murder and Barry Sherman’s way of conducting business.

But “price gouging” as Attaran accused Sherman of would have been ripping off many more Canadians.

Nonetheless, again, the perspectives from Sherman’s standpoint were quite the opposite. In the last quote earlier from Robinson’s 2001 book, Sherman was quoted as saying that it was difficult to invest in the Canadian health-care industry to make a profit.

Here is a more objective description by Robinson in his book, of Apotex’s drug prices and profitability:

“… Sherman brought generic drugs to market, charged 70 to 80 per cent of the brand price, took half the market share, and steered Apotex through sixteen years of strong growth.”

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

No doubt Apotex’s half share of the entire Canadian market and “sixteen years of strong growth” indicated strong profitability. Perhaps 70-80% of the brand-name drug price was still, as Attaran has said, “among the highest prices in the world for generics”, which would mean that Sherman and Apotex did not pass enough of the profits to the Canadian consumers.

But if one reads more carefully his words earlier quoted from Robinson’s book, Sherman’s main preoccupation did not seem to be on cheaper drugs, but on breaking “the monopolies” of the brand-name drug companies.

Another quote of him here from Robinson’s book confirms that Sherman’s higher priorities were expanding the Canadian drug industry and creating pharmaceutical jobs in Canada:

“The generic industry is vital to Canada. When I say vital I’m talking about high-tech employment, research, and saving money for the health-care system. I’ve spent thirty years building this fantastic industry in Canada, we employ thousand of people, we save billions of dollars for the health-care system, we’ve done all the right things…”

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

I can interpret Sherman’s priorities stated above as: this fantastic generic industry in Canada, high-tech employment, research and – then – cheaper health-care.

And I would not be surprised if Sherman indeed directed Apotex’s business strategies and finance in that priority order.

In fact, after Sherman’s murder, author Jeffrey Robinson again restated Sherman’s agenda in that order, “creating jobs in Canada” and “protecting the little guy against big pharma”:

““Barry Sherman was constantly at war with everybody and when I talked to him, he had an agenda, ‘I’m creating jobs in Canada’, ‘I’m protecting the little guy against big pharma’,” Robinson recalled.

“He was basically saying, ‘it’s me against the world.’””

(“SHERMAN MURDERS: Did organized crime kill billionaire?”, by Brad Hunter, February 1, 2018, Toronto Sun)

So, it wasn’t fully ethical when Barry Sherman and Apotex emphasized so much to the public – probably in their advertising mode – as noted by Attaran, that they fought hard in court to bring cheaper drugs to Canadians. But when he was interviewed for a book on the pharmaceutical industry, Sherman did carefully phrase his objectives.

Now, all that legal fighting must have also come with huge legal costs, which would have reduced the amount of savings that could have been passed on to the Canadian consumers.

Shortly after the Shermans’ murder, Toronto Life magazine republished a 2008 article on the Shermans, that included a succinct description of what Apotex achieved and how it did it, citing a few telling numbers:

“When Sherman founded the company in 1974, generic drugs were generally dismissed as flawed imitations of the real thing. Since then, Apotex has become Canada’s largest drug manufacturer, filling 75 million prescriptions a year. Most of the company’s 300 products are versions of such widely used drugs as the antidepressant Paxil, the antihistamine Claritin and the antibiotic Tetracyn. Apotex tests and develops its products with a staff of 2,100 scientists, who run a 105-bed clinical hospital for human guinea pigs.

Sherman also spends a small fortune on litigation—a full 50 per cent of what he invests in research. Generic manufacturers like Apotex live or die by the speed with which they can plunge into the market­place with copycat versions. So they make it their business to shorten the duration that brand name companies hold on to drug monopolies, weighing potential profits against the risk of lawsuits. It’s not unusual for Apotex—probably the country’s biggest litigator—to be engaged in 100 court cases simultaneously.”

(“Bitter Pill”, by Geraldine Sherman, December 18, 2017, Toronto Life)

The above recount of Apotex’s history included at least three matters worth digging into for their relevance to Sherman’s business practice: one, Apotex had a staff of 2,100 scientists who run “a 105-bed clinical hospital for human guinea pigs”; two, Sherman had an astonishing amount of business spending on legal litigation, equal to 50% of his investment on research; and three, Apotex typically began marketing a generic drug when the brand-name drug patent was still in effect – trying to cut the patent short, taking the risk of getting into legal disputes.

Firstly, how bad were Sherman’s drug trials using “human guinea pigs”? That could involve issues of ethics.

A 2006 news story on Aotex’s generic version of the heart drug Plavix mentioned the human experiments at that 105-bed Apotex hospital, but revealed no detail as to any risks they could pose to the patients’ health:

“Apotex has more than 6,300 employees and fills one in every three prescriptions in Canada, Sherman said. Sales of Plavix this year may double his annual revenue to $2 billion, he said.

The Apotex complex covers several city blocks in the Toronto suburb of Weston. Sherman owns just about everything that touches his drugs, from the chemistry labs to the plants that produce capsules, pill bottles and labels.

To speed drug development, he opened a 105-bed hospital three years ago to conduct drug trials. The beds are filled with paid participants from a database of 30,000 pre-screened people. Blood drawn there can be analysed in labs around the corner, and medications can be rapidly modified and sent back to the hospital for additional tests.

For more than a week now, Apotex equipment has been churning out copies of Plavix pills at a rate of six million every 14 hours. The product, used to prevent heart attacks and strokes, keeps platelets from clumping together and forming clots. Plavix last year was the world’s second-biggest selling drug behind Pfizer Inc.’s cholesterol medicine Lipitor.”

(“Apotex CEO vows he’ll best Sanofi, Bristol-Myers in battle over Plavix rights; ‘I don’t ever shy away from a fight,’ says Barry Sherman”, by Lisa Rapaport, August 19, 2006, Telegraph-Journal)

It certainly sounded like very high-intensity patient drug trials at Apotex’s hospital purposely built for drug trials, a hospital owned, like “just about everything” of Apotex’s, by Barry Sherman.

Nevertheless, reviewing the press archives I have not come across news about these drug trials and so, I guess like others say, ‘no news is good news’.

Secondly, how could Apotex sell a generic drug before the original patent’s expiration and what were the legal risks like? This obviously had much to do with his company’s huge legal spending.

Consider the example of Plavix here. The above quote mentioned that Apotex was mass-producing and mass-selling its generic version of the heart drug Plavix at the time in 2006.

The patent for the brand-name Plavix was still in effect and would be for another five more years; predictably, Sherman’s move got Apotex into a serious legal battle in the U.S.:

“His latest battle, which played out in a U.S. court Friday, is over Plavix, the world’s second-best selling drug, with $6.2 billion US in sales last year. If Apotex prevails, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Sanofi-Aventis SA will lose their exclusive right to market Plavix five years earlier than planned and Apotex will get a windfall selling a cheaper version of the $4-a-day blood-thinning pill.

Sherman is at the centre of a storm involving drug prices. Apotex and generic-drug makers are challenging the validity of product patents so they can sell less-expensive copies sooner than scheduled. …

…

… In a hearing Friday in U.S. court in New York, Bristol-Myers and Sanofi
asked a judge for an injunction to halt sales of Apotex’s generic copy of Plavix and for an order that the Canadian drugmaker recall inventory already sold. Apotex has argued the Plavix patent was invalid and that an injunction would cause irreparable harm by forcing a recall of millions of dollars in medication already distributed.”

(Lisa Rapaport, August 19, 2006, Telegraph Journal)

As the story told, “Apotex and generic-drug makers are challenging the validity of product patents so they can sell less-expensive copies sooner than scheduled”.

So, Apotex wasn’t the only generic-drug makers who challenged existing brand-name drug patents.

But Apotex also put its generic version of Plavix on the market five years before the patent’s expiration, doing so by simply arguing that the patent was invalid. It was Barry Sherman’s battle and not just Apotex’s, as the above news story stated univocally.

The court injunction being sought by the Big Pharma companies in this case, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis, while the existing drug patent was being contested in a broader court battle, would force Apotex to immediately stop sale of the generics and recall the sold products.

That would mean absolutely no income for Apotex at this point in time while having to pay the costs of developing and selling the generics.

Getting the injunction was critical for these Big Pharma brand-name drug companies, because Sherman’s move caused them major financial losses:

“Sanofi and Bristol-Myers “lost $10 billion in market capitalization since” Apotex began selling the generic Aug. 8, said Evan Chesler, the companies’ lawyer, during opening arguments.

“You can never put our Humpty Dumpty back together again if this thing isn’t stopped.”

Apotex attorney Robert Silver said during opening arguments that removing generic Plavix from the market would harm consumers by driving up prices. “If we’re off the market, then they have the entire market again and they can charge whatever they want.””

(Lisa Rapaport, August 19, 2006, Telegraph Journal)

As Evan Chesler, lawyer for Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, was quoted telling a U.S. court on August 18, 2006, the two companies lost $10 billion in their stock market worth since August 8 when Apotex began selling its generic version with the original patent still in effect – only about 10 days of Apotex’s sale of generics already made these Big Pharma companies feel like a broken “Humpty Dumpty”.

In response, U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein ordered an injunction to halt Apotex’s sale of the generics while the legal litigation was in process, but refused to order Apotex to recall the sold products:

“… On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein agreed and issued an injunction that prevented Apotex from producing generic versions of the drug until the case has concluded. However, Judge Stein refused to order Apotex to recall pills that it had already shipped.”

(“Apotex rolled the dice on Plavix and they came up snake eyes”, by Paul Waldie, September 2, 2006, The Globe and Mail)

So, Sherman’s aggressive, risk-taking strategy, putting the generic Plavix on the U.S. market in violation of the drug patent, got Apotex a 10-day sale revenue that it could keep for the time being.

That 10-day market damage inflicted on Bristol-Myers Squibb was enough to see the Big Pharma company’s CEO be forced to step down:

“Bristol-Myers loss of Plavix was only temporary, but the impact of Apotex’s aggressive strategy was devastating.

…

Bristol-Myers’ earnings stagnated and its share price plummeted. For getting outmaneuvered by Apotex, Bristol-Myers’ chief executive was
forced to resign. And it’s not over yet. The two sides are back in court fighting over whether the Plavix patent is valid once again. …”

(“Apotex’s jagged little pills”, by John Greenwood, January 29, 2007, National Post)

I also note that compared to, as discussed earlier, Apotex’s generic drug prices at 70-80% of the brand-name prices in Canada, in the U.S. in 2006 Apotex’s generic Plavix was in great demand even at 80-90% of the brand-name price:

“Apotex’s generic version is selling for about 10% to 20% less than typical US$4-a-day Plavix, which is widely used to prevent recurrences of heart attacks and strokes. Bristol-Myers announced this week it was giving rebates to its customers in an attempt to counter Apotex’s generic price.”

(“Generic drug, specific issue: Apotex fights Plavix”, by Stephanie Saul, August 16, 2006, National Post)

With such a heated head-to-head competition between Apotex and the two international pharmaceutical giants, and the Apotex generic version selling briskly despite only at a modest discount, I guess there would be less ground for the legal and medical expert Amir Attaran to accuse Barry Sherman of gouging, in this case, U.S. consumers.

And now, thirdly, how large in reality was Sherman’s spending on legal costs, that equalled 50% of his research investment?

The Plavix case illustrated that serious legal spending was necessary to ensure a high-stake and fierce dispute over the right to sell drugs in a lucrative market to stay within the legal realm and be properly adjudicated, and not get carried away.

A 2008 news story cited a few interesting numbers about Canadian lawyers earning generic drug litigation money and their gratitude toward Sherman, especially in the context of patent litigation generally in Canada:

“Harry Radomski of the law firm Goodmans in Toronto is lead generic drug counsel for Apotex inc. He’s driving a litigation train.

Notice of compliance cases — a method pharmaceutical companies use for obtaining approval of a new drug — constitute some 90% of the firm’s IP litigation, generating between $10-and $20-million in annual billings for Mr. Radomski and his colleagues.

The truth is that pharmaceutical litigation of the kind known as generic drug litigation is a docket hog. Such cases make up at least 60% of all patent cases in the Federal Court and consume at least 75% of the legal fees. Indeed, on one summer day, 17 of the 20 motions on the Federal Court list in Toronto were pharmaceutical cases.

“IP litigation lawyers should erect a monument to Barry Sherman,” says Scott Jolliffe, managing partner of Gowling Lafleur Henderson in Toronto.

…

“The pure profit of the generics is one thousandfold that of the brands, so there’s huge money at stake for both parties,” Mr. Jolliffe says.

It pays the generic companies, then, to take on litigation with slim chances of success in the hope that one suit will pay off in spades.

“Barry Sherman will tell you that he needs to win only one case in 100 in order for his company to stay very profitable,” Mr. Jolliffe says.”

(“Litigation train keeps rolling on; Patent Lawsuits”, by Julius Melitzer, September 24, 2008, National Post)

As reported, Goodmans, the law firm of Apotex’s lead generic drug counsel Harry Radomski, brought in $10-20 million annually from just one type of generic drug cases – Notice of compliance cases – and that at the Federal Court of Canada, generic drug cases made up 60% of the patent cases and consumed 75% of the legal fees.

And as lawyer Scott Jolliffe pointed out, the pure profit of generic drugs is a thousand times of the brand-name drugs and Barry Sherman only needed to win one in 100 cases for Apotex to be very profitable. So, in taking the legal risks and counting on litigation, to the Canadian Intellectual Property litigation lawyers – many of whom undoubtedly enriched by the Apotex legal cases – Sherman was a hero deserving “a monument”.

From the press’s portrayals of his generic drug business ambitions and drive that I have reviewed to this point, I would describe Barry Sherman’s business practice as commercially and legally very aggressive, probably to the point of being reckless, and possibly with some misplaced priorities.

But I can’t quite call Sherman a “pitbull” that the Maclean’s investigative article has termed, or “unethical” as law and medicine professor Amir Attaran has also alleged.

In Robinson’s 2001 book, Sherman explained why his company had a better focus on producing and selling drugs than Big Pharma did, which spent a lot of its money on marketing and advertising, in Canada:

“Apotex employs some thirty-five hundred people, compared with Big Pharma’s total in Canada of around fifteen thousand. But Sherman points out that Apotex produces more than Big Pharm does. “They have all these people in marketing and 30 per cent of their income goes to these glossy ads to doctors. The purpose of the ads, of course, is not to get the best therapy but to get the doctors to prescribe those things on which the drug companies make the most profit. …Then, as soon as there’s generic competition, they move on to promoting something that’s more expensive, even though it’s not necessarily better.””

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

Barry Sherman sounded a lot like a Canadian industry hero, a patriot, didn’t he – even if Apotex’s generic drugs weren’t that cheap for the Canadian consumers as pointed out by Amir Attaran?

With my review thus far of various media-reported facts, there is an emerging picture of how Barry Sherman and Apotex competed with the international brand-name drug companies to grow and establish his company as the leading Canadian generic drug company, and in the process became financially successful.

Thus, one can can ponder a more specific question about “who could have murdered” the Shermans: driven by unrelenting ambitions, could Sherman’s Canadian pharmaceutical business practice have been a cause of the “targeted” brutal murder of him and his wife – regardless of his being “unethical in business”, facts about which I have not yet encountered in my review?

Surprisingly, the answer is affirmative because, as cited earlier from the Maclean’s investigative article, Sherman was quoted in Robinson’s book as having entertained that thought, and here a fuller quote from that book shows what exactly Sherman pointed his accusing finger at:

“The branded drug companies hate us. They have private investigators on us all the time. The thought once came to my mind, why didn’t they just hire someone to knock me off? For a thousand bucks paid to the right person, you can probably get someone killed. Perhaps I’m surprised that hadn’t happened.”

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

“The branded drug companies” could “just hire someone to knock me off”, and “I’m surprised that hadn’t happened”, said Sherman as above.

Interestingly, at the time of their conversation, Jeffrey Robinson thought Barry Sherman wasn’t really serious about the possibility of being targeted; and now the author has professed to be “stunned” by the murder:

“Jeffrey Robinson — author of Prescription Games – Money, Ego and Power Inside the Global Pharmaceutical Industry — interviewed Sherman for the 2001 book.

He said he was stunned when he heard the generic drug dynamo had been murdered.

…

However, the writer said that when Sherman said he was surprised he hadn’t been bumped off by his slew of enemies, he was being glib.

“Barry said it like, ‘I bought another baseball mitt mom,’” Robinson said. “Neither of us took it seriously and it has nothing to do with what’s going on right now.””

(Brad Hunter, February 1, 2018, Toronto Sun)

But Sherman’s “targeted” murder has happened, whether or not Robinson took it seriously when Sherman said it could have happened. Without a more thorough analysis, any investigation should not dismiss the scenario that it may have involved Big Pharma.

For instance, Apotex’s aggressive generic drug selling would readily, as in the case of the heart drug Plavix discussed earlier, breach an existing patent, i.e., illegally while it was still in effect, and the unpleasant market surprise could cause substantial financial losses and made the brand-name drug companies and their dependents feel like a broken “Humpty Dumpty”. Consequently, the thought of “knocking off” such a competitor could have come to the minds of some who suffered losses, as it had come across this competitor’s own mind.

Along this line of contemplation, one would be looking at international pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the likes of Pfizer, Merck, Bayer and AstraZeneca – to cite a few mentioned in Robinson’s 2001 book – for culpability.

However, to be fair, even if brand-name drug companies were somehow connected to the Shermans’ murder, one should still consider issues on Barry Sherman’s part – such as his “unethical” business dealings – that could have contributed to his bloody end.

The Maclean’s April 2018 investigative article has cited a specific person, Morton Shulman, who had been a pharmaceutical business battle with Sherman and who regarded Sherman with utter contempt:

“… The late physician and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Morton Shulman, who did battle with Sherman, called him “the only person I have ever met with no redeeming features whatsoever.”

(Anne Kingston and Michael Friscolanti, April 5, 2018, Maclean’s)

Jesus Christ, “no redeeming features whatsoever”!

The article did not cite any concrete facts in relation to such a derogatory comment on Barry Sherman by “the late physician and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Morton Shulman”. Nonetheless, when one learns who Morton Sherman was, his characterization of Sherman could well be damning, or even condemning:

“Morton Shulman, OC (25 April 1925 – August 18, 2000) was a Canadian politician, businessman, broadcaster, columnist, coroner, and physician.

…

In exchange for his involvement in the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, he was appointed Ontario’s chief coroner in 1961. In 1963, he was named Chief Coroner of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. Shulman was outspoken and used the coroner position to crusade on a number of issues such as enacting tougher regulations on lifejackets for small boats, having government regulate car safety, the introduction of breathalysers into Ontario, and against then-restrictive abortion laws after he investigated the deaths of women who had died while trying to terminate their pregnancies. … His years as a coroner became the inspiration for the Canadian television drama Wojeck.

…

After embarrassing the provincial government by revealing its inaction in enforcing the fire code in a recently built hospital, he was fired, in 1967, as Ontario’s Chief Coroner and decided to avenge himself by running for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. … Despite his strong capitalist beliefs, he decided to run for the democratic socialist party because they gave him a free hand in choosing his own riding, and because their views in support of public safety were compatible with his own. He ran as a candidate in High Park and was elected as Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the riding in the 1967 provincial election.

…

From 1977 until 1982, he hosted a hard-hitting television show on CITY-TV called The Shulman File which featured confrontational interviews, sensationalist and risque topics and outrageous opinions. … At the same time, he began writing a regular column in the Toronto Sun which continued into the 1990s. …”

(“Morton Shulman – Biography”, JewAge)

The late Dr. Shulman once served as the Chief Coroner of the province of Ontario and also of the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, his crusades for human safety inspired a Canadian TV drama, and he later became a politician, a newspaper columnist and the host of a hard-hitting TV interview and opinion show.

The experience of examining human deaths and determining the causes should give Shulman the ability to judge personality and character. Hence, if Shulman did not exaggerate in his “hard-hitting” opinion of Sherman, the latter must have been quite “unethical” in at least some of the many business and legal battles he and Apotex fought against others, including Shulman and the brand-name drug companies.

In the press archives, there is a reasonable amount of past coverage on legal disputes in 1993-1994 pitching Sherman and Apotex against Shulman and his company, Deprenyl Research.

Their disputes originated from Apotex’s plan to develop and market a generic version of a brand-name drug, deprenyl, also known as selegeline, for Parkinson’s disease, which Shulman suffered from and as a result started a company owning the drug’s Canadian right, selling it under the trademark name Eldepryl.

It was a David vs. Goliath battle, except not pitching Sherman and Apotex against Big Pharma like in most of the media-reported legal cases involving Sherman and Apotex, but in a role reversal pitching them against a small Canadian company and its owner Morton Shulman, who was a practising medical doctor:

“Apotex, in documents filed in the Ontario Court’s General Division, claims Dr. Shulman has defamed it by using a stamp on his patients’ prescriptions that instructs pharmacists not to fill them with drugs made by Apotex.

In its statement of claim, Apotex said it wants $1-million in damages …

…

Dr. Shulman said in an affidavit that he has concerns about the safety of Apotex products because of reports about legal problems Apotex and an associated company in the United States are having with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He said he has an obligation to protect the interests of his patients.

…

The drug is used for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, which affects the central nervous system.

Dr. Shulman, who suffers from Parkinson’s, is a former chief coroner for Metropolitan Toronto, former New Democratic Party member of the Ontario Legislature, author of several best-selling books on how to accumulate wealth, former host of a television public-affairs program and a millionaire who still practices medicine.

… In an interview last year, Apotex president Bernard (Barry) Sherman said the company made 109 different generic drugs, had annual sales of more than $200-million in Canada and almost $500-million world wide.

“In April, 1993, Deprenyl became aware that Apotex intended to develop and market its (own) brand of selegeline,” Mr. Sherman said in an affidavit filed with the court. “Competition by the Apotex generic brand of selegeline would pose a very serious threat to Deprenyl.””

(“Drug firm sues Shulman for defamation; Apotex seeks damages over MD’s orders on prescriptions against use of its products”, by Peter Moon, July 2, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

As told in the above, Sherman wasn’t shy about the prospect that his big company’s generic drug could pose “a very serious threat” to the small company of Shulman’s, but was quite blunt telling the court about it.

When Shulman first learned of that unpleasant prospect in April 1993, he asked, through an intermediary Arnold Polan, for Sherman’s consideration not to introduce the generic, as he recalled in a court affidavit in defence against the above-cited $1 million Apotex lawsuit, “Deprenyl produces but one drug, whereas Apotex has many”:

“In their affidavits, Mr. Sherman and Dr. Shulman agree that Arnold Polan, a Toronto stockbroker who has traded stocks for both men, met with Mr. Sherman at Dr. Shulman’s request.

“I asked Mr. Arnold Polan to speak to Mr. Sherman to see if he would not develop and introduce (a generic version of selegeline),” Dr. Shulman’s affidavit said. “Deprenyl produces but one drug, whereas Apotex has many.””

(Peter Moon, July 2, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

Sherman flatly rejected Shulman’s request. Shulman then began to instruct pharmacists to exclude Apotex’s drugs from the medicines he prescribed as medical doctor, and that action incurred the Apotex lawsuit:

“I refused,” Mr. Sherman’s affidavit said. “It appears that, as a result of (my) refusal to accede to (Dr. Shulman’s) request, (he) determined that he would attempt to intimidate me into withdrawing development and sale of Apotex’s generic selegeline, or alternatively, to punish Apotex for my refusing to do so.

“Commencing some time in the week of May 3, 1993, on prescriptions which he wrote, and without regard to whether Apotex even manufactured the particular medicines being prescribed, (Dr. Shulman) placed the following stipulation: ‘Do not fill this prescription with an Apotex product.’” As a result of protests by Apotex, court records show, Dr. Shulman stopped using the stamp. But he replaced it with another one that instructed pharmacists to fill patients’ prescriptions with “Original brand or Novapharm. No sub.”

The stipulation meant pharmacists could dispense only higher-priced brand-name products or generic drugs manufactured by Novapharm Ltd., Apotex’s chief competitor in the manufacture of generic drugs.

Dr. Shulman’s affidavit says a physician has a right to prescribe whatever brand of drug he wishes. “I believe that if I have reason to doubt the efficacy of a particular product, then it is my responsibility to my patients to make sure that that brand is not taken. I have such reasonable doubts with respect to (Apotex) and its products.””

(Peter Moon, July 2, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

The Sherman-Shulman dispute is a good example showing that Barry Sherman and Apotex were not merely focused on fighting Big Pharma but also keen on pushing a generic drug even when it could threaten the wellbeing of a small Canadian-owned company.

In this case, the owner of the small company the Apotex generics would pose “a very serious threat to” – in Sherman’s own language in a court affidavit – was also a medical doctor and a former chief coroner, and thus had first-hand professional expertise on medicines and their effects. As Shulman stated in his court affidavit, that “if I have reason to doubt the efficacy of a particular product, then it is my responsibility to my patients to make sure that that brand is not taken. I have such reasonable doubts with respect to (Apotex) and its products.”

Most uniquely in this case, the small brand-name drug company owner himself was also a sufferer of Parkinson’s disease that the drug was for the treatment of, and he tried to appeal for Sherman’s compassion – since Shulman’s Deprenyl Research company produced only that one drug – to stop Apotex from marketing its generic version.

Sherman’s firm refusal and brash attitude, as shown by quotes from his court affidavit, were in my view quite in stark contrast to his reputation projected to the public as a compassionate and generous philanthropist.

Sherman was ungenerous and unkind to refuse to consider Shulman’s unique and difficult personal predicament, and then showed lack of compassion for compromise with his stern and unabashed pursue of Shulman in court in order to stamp out Shulman’s individual gesture of protest as a doctor about Apotex drugs.

Particularly abominably, Sherman and Apotex chose a time when Shulman’s Parkinson’s disease had begun worsening, after years of successful treatment with that drug, to announce their plan to make the generic version:

“Dr. Morton Shulman, officially retired but still proud father of Deprenyl Research Ltd., and Barry Sherman, president and owner of Apotex Ltd., are doing battle, armed with legal briefs, affidavits and reports from private investigators.

…

Allegations, insinuations and downright slanderous statements are flying in both directions. Despite attempts to negotiate a truce, it seems likely this war will continue.

“This is a true crusade,” Shulman said in an interview in his Roncesvalles Ave. office. “I’ve got nothing to do (but fight with Sherman.) I’m delighted. It was a godsend that this came along.”

The battle started this spring, about the same time Shulman, 68, was being eased into retirement from Deprenyl Research, the company he founded to import a drug to combat Parkinson’s disease.

Shulman, who last week was made an officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions in health care, won fame and fortune as a crusading Metro coroner in the 1960s, an outspoken MPP, opinionated investment counsellor, television talk show host and drug company founder.

He suffers from Parkinson’s disease and set up Deprenyl in 1987 to import the drug Eldepryl from Europe.

Shulman became his company’s best advertisement as the drug alleviated his symptoms for years. Now, his condition is deteriorating and his speech is slurred and movements are jerky.

Shulman’s son Geoffrey and Dr. Martin Barkin, who was brought in last year to run Deprenyl, now manage the company as it tries to expand its range of products and defend its Eldepryl turf.”

(“Shulman vs. Sherman; The drug entrepreneurs face off”, by Art Chamberlain, July 11, 1993, Toronto Star)

At that particular time, Barry Sherman was literally adding insult to Morton Sherman’s injury.

And the insult could mean more: the above July 11, 1993 Toronto Star story noted that Shulman “last week was made an officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions in health care” – likely on July 1, Canada Day – but I notice that his Order of Canada appointment may have been made on April 22, i.e., in the same month when Shulman became of Apotex’s plan to make a generic version of his drug – a timeline stated in Sherman’s court affidavit cited earlier earlier from a July 2, 1993 The Globe and Mail article.

(“Honours, Order of Canada, Morton Shulman, O.C., M.D.”, updated March 26, 2018, Archives, Governor General of Canada)

In deciding to produce a generic version, Sherman and Apotex disregarded the existing patents covering Shulman’s drug brand:

“Shulman says he met Sherman a few years ago when Sherman made an unsuccessful offer to buy Deprenyl, but their paths have not crossed since.

Once a drug patent expires, or is legally defeated, companies such as Apotex and Novopharm Ltd. can make generic copies and earn a healthy profit selling them at a fraction of the brand-name’s cost.

In April, Apotex announced it felt Deprenyl’s patents wouldn’t stand up in court, and it planned to begin selling a copy soon.

Deprenyl and Apotex have a separate legal action over the patent protection that hasn’t come to court yet.”

(Art Chamberlain, July 11, 1993, Toronto Star)

As cited above, besides the lawsuit by Apotex against Shulman which Sherman played a personal role in, there was a separate legal patent case between Shulman’s Deprenyl Research and Sherman’s Apotex.

I note that, like later in 2006 selling a generic version of Plavix in the U.S., without first legally contesting the existing patents but by only asserting its own opinion, Apotex would produce and sell the generics. This was a tact Apotex used whenever it could as Sherman discussed its pros and cons in Jeffrey Robinson’s 2001 book, quoted earlier.

It seemed that nothing could affect Sherman’s single-minded, strong-willed and boorish drive pursuing his monumental generic drug ambitions.

But in Shulman’s case, something did seem to stop Sherman from pushing ahead with the generic version according to a January 1994 Toronto Star article reviewing Shulman’s autobiography, Can’t Somebody Shut Him Up?; maybe it had to do with former Chief Coroner Shulman’s law enforcement connection, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation  launched a criminal investigation of Apotex and it changed Sherman’s mind:

“Although Can’t Somebody Shut Him Up? claims to be about his whole life, it focuses mostly on his latest life, the life he created for himself after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 11 years ago when he was in his mid-50s. Sentenced to death by the disease, (or worse, a life of helplessness) he discovers a Hungarian wonder drug that can treat his symptoms. Then he turns the drug, Deprenyl, into a pharmaceutical company that at one time was worth $100 million. Along the way he is accused of stock manipulation, quackery and worse. Among the claims he makes for Deprenyl is that it has strengthened his libido (never weak, in any case): “My wife was quite amazed and what had been a twice weekly activity became and has remained a daily delight.”

…

Shulman acknowledges that he has a thirst for revenge. This book is his opportunity to get back at those he perceives as his enemies. One enemy is
Canadian generic drug king pin Barry Sherman, the founder of Apotex, Inc., who matches Shulman in tenacity and aggressiveness. Not long after
tangling with Shulman, the FBI investigated Sherman’s company for mail fraud, money laundering and illegal drug dispensing; Sherman, not
surprisingly, gave up the idea of producing a generic version of Shulman’s wonder drug.”

(“Another look at what makes Morty run”, by Edward Trapunski, January 15, 1994, Toronto Star)

It took two to tango. As told above, Morton Shulman clearly liked to exaggerate and he also manipulated his company’s stocks; on the other hand, Barry Sherman could be an even more “unethical” businessman if some of the FBI allegations, “mail fraud, money laundering and illegal drug dispensing”, were true.

The July 11, 1993 Toronto Star story quoted earlier mentioned “reports from private investigators” that were used in the legal dispute between Apotex and Shulman. Specifically, Shulman hired private investigators to look into Sherman’s business practice, and that may have helped him reach a settlement in the end:

“Two years ago, he and former coroner and MPP Morton Shulman waged a public dispute that entertained the pharmaceutical industry for months with charges and counter charges over a drug to treat Parkinson’s disease.

Shulman even had private investigators digging into Sherman’s complicated corporate world, which includes operations in Bermuda and a host of American companies.

In the end, they negotiated a truce and dropped the lawsuits.”

(“Taking heart from court victory Drug stockpile a gold mine for Apotex”, by Art Chamberlain, May 23, 1995, Toronto Star)

The settlement, with Sherman and Apotex dropping the $1 million lawsuit and Shulman agreeing not to exclude Apotex from prescriptions he wrote as a doctor, was reported by the media in November 1993:

“The two bad boys of the pharmaceutical business have called a truce in their public spat.

Barry Sherman, president of Apotex Inc., has dropped a lawsuit for a little matter of $1 million. And Morty Shulman, doctor and founder of Deprenyl Research Ltd., has agreed to stop stamping his prescriptions with a note telling pharmacists not to use Apotex drugs.

Shulman was not too happy about Sherman’s plans to sell a copy of Deprenyl’s main product. But the medical multi-millionaires have agreed to patch things up.

“He’s stopped,” Sherman said this week. “He doesn’t want to be confronted with a lawsuit for damages because he knows he’d lose.”

“I haven’t used the stamp for a long time,” Shulman said. He added: “One of the terms is that I’m not allowed to say anything.”

That’s a bit of a problem for a man with a new biography called Can’t Somebody Shut Him Up?

The answer seems to be no: Shulman did go on to talk about the settlement. But he called back with a chuckle two minutes later. He said his lawyer told him his comments would be in contempt of court.”

(“Medical multi-millionaires stamp out their drug row”, November 6, 1993, Toronto Star)

As reported above, as of November 1993 with the legal settlement, Shulman was still unhappy because it did not stop Apotex’s plan to develop and sell a generic version of the brand-name drug he owned the Canadian right of.

In an earlier quote from a review of Shulman’s new autobiography, in the Toronto Star on January 15, 1994, it was reported that Sherman “gave up the idea of producing a generic version of Shulman’s wonder drug” due to an FBI criminal investigation of him:

“Not long after tangling with Shulman, the FBI investigated Sherman’s company for mail fraud, money laundering and illegal drug dispensing; Sherman, not surprisingly, gave up the idea of producing a generic version of Shulman’s wonder drug.”

(Edward Trapunski, January 15, 1994, Toronto Star)

That was probably Shulman’s view by January 15, 1994, a few months after the legal settlement.

Ironically, Shulman’s autobiography was entitled Can’t Somebody Shut Him Up?. Obviously, Shulman did not like to shut up and in his new autobiography he bragged about his battle with Sherman.

Unfortunately in this case, Sherman did not really give up. Thirteen days later on January 28, another Toronto Star story cited Sherman as stating that “Apotex is developing a generic version of deprenyl to sell in Canada”:

“Sherman has said Apotex is developing a generic version of deprenyl to sell in Canada.”

(“Apotex chief must testify, judge rules U.S. civil lawsuit over deprenyl sale set for April trial”, by Art Chamberlain, January 28, 1994, Toronto Star)

Clearly, an FBI criminal investigation and Shulman’s private investigation, both digging into his business practice, weren’t enough to change Sherman’s mind, after all.

That history looks even more ironic today, that currently there are also a police criminal investigation and a private investigation, the latter launched by Barry Sherman’s family, into the Sherman couple’s own double murder – bear in mind that Morton Shulman was a former Chief Coroner!

It was logical from Sherman’s standpoint in 1994 that he and Apotex did not give up. They had planned to produce a generic for Shulman’s drug ever since the early days of Shulman’s drug business. Shulman’s autobiography, co-authored with Toronto writer Susan Kastner and published in late 1993, recalled some prior history:

“One fine day in May 1993, Barry Sherman announced he was bringing out a 40 percent lower-priced generic version of Eldepryl, and that there was nothing Morty and his folks could do to stop him.

What made it particularly galling for Morty was the fact that only two weeks earlier, Deprenyl had confidently announced that Eldepryl would be safe for nearly three more years from the depredations of the generics – protected by a brand-new regulation that gave extra teeth to Bill C-91, the Patent Protection Act.

…

Barry Sherman has had his sights trained on selegeline, the chemical generic of Eldepryl, for a long time, and now he means to bag it for Apotex.

Within months of Eldepryl’s HPB approval as a recognized Parkinson’s medication, in January 1990, Apotex signalled its interest in cloning the drug.

Morty had, of course, earmarked the generic threat from the very start. As part of his push for HPB sanction he hooked into the pharmaceutical industry fight for the passage of Bill C-91, a new law to beef up patent protection against the accursed generics.

…

In February [1993], the Morton and Gloria Shulman Centre for the study of Movement Disorders opens in a modestly gala ceremony at Toronto Western Hospital.

In March, 1993, a Private Member’s Bill is introduced to buy Eldepryl patent protection until 1997.

“What, no statue? No horse, no sword?” quips a delighted Morty.

Late in April, 1993, he scoots a flyer to pharmacists, bearing on its cover APO – the Apotex logo – with a big X through it:

“It’s time to Substitute. If it has APO in the name it comes from Apotex. Apotex is owned by Barry Sherman.””

(Dr. Morton Shulman and Susan Kastner, Can’t Somebody Shut Him Up?, 1993, Warwick Publishing Group)

As in the above from his autobiography, Shulman began sending a flyer to pharmacists in late April 1993, to ask them not to use Apotex drugs. It indicates that this was the time when his negotiation with Sherman through an intermediary, cited earlier, failed to stop Apotex’s plan for the generic version. Within two weeks, Sherman publicly announced Apotex’s plan to introduce the generic version.

A 40% discount from the brand-name drug appeared lower than the usual 20-30% discount of Apotex generics as reviewed earlier, although it’s not clear if the price Sherman announced in this case was specifically targeted.

Sherman’s announcement, barely two weeks after Shulman invoking a new legislative protection for the brand-name patent, also presented Apotex’s opinion why the new legislation could not protect the brand-name drug from Apotex’s generic:

“On April 27, 1993, Morty sends “A Letter to My Friends” on stationery of The Safety Corporation.

…

The Globe story that day describes a new federal regulation that extends the drug-patent protection extended by Bill C-91. It closes a loophole that allowed generics to quietly begin development of patent drug copies before a patent has expired, and go on working while the whole thing is battled in court.

Now the generic company must give notice of intention to the patent holder, and will be prevented from selling its copy for up to 30 months after court action is commenced.

This is the 30-month safety shield Deprenyl has happily invoked.

But barely two weeks later, here is Barry Sherman making a counter-pronouncement that Apotex means to produce Eldepryl by a process that has nothing to do with the patented Deprenyl method.

This means war.”

(Dr. Morton Shulman and Susan Kastner, 1993, Warwick Publishing Group)

From Sherman’s perspective, this was an example of an “anti-competitive regulation” as he referred to in Robinson’s 2001 book, that was an obstacle to Apotex’s generic drug drive, except that the provisional brand-name protection in this case would benefit a small Canadian drug company, not Big Pharma.

In Shulman’s failed negotiation with Sherman, his intermediary Arnold Polan received Sherman’s reply that it would take a $10 million payment from Shulman – the amount of profit that Sherman estimated he would make from the generic – for Apotex not to produce and sell the generic:

“Mr. Polan asked him what would it take for Apotex to stop developing and producing in competition to Deprenyl. Mr. Sherman said that likely he would make about $10 million profit and so if Dr. Shulman wanted to stop him, it would cost $10 million.”

(Dr. Morton Shulman and Susan Kastner, 1993, Warwick Publishing Group)

Regardless of which of the two was winning their battle – apparently Sherman and his giant Apotex were much more resourceful, both legally and technologically – one thing is clear about their comparison, that the Canadian official reputation of Shulman’s has been better than that of Sherman’s.

Morton Sherman was an Officer of the Order of Canada, whereas Barry Sherman became, at a lower rank, a Member of the Order of Canada posthumously; while both lived to the age of 75, Shulman received the honour in 1993, the year of his dispute with Sherman, and then lived for another 7 years.

(updated March 26, 2018, Archives, Governor General of Canada; and, “Appointments to the Order of Canada”, December 29, 2017/January 11, 2018, The Governor General of Canada)

Nonetheless, for someone with Sherman’s achievements and official honour, one obviously cannot easily agree with Shulman that this man was of “no redeeming features whatsoever”.

While I have not found detailed media coverage of Shulman’s private investigation into Sherman’s business practice, which may have influenced his opinion of Sherman, media coverage of the FBI criminal investigation beginning in June 1993, and of a related lawsuit filed by a U.S. drug company, did show the extent of illegal marketing activities Sherman and one of his family members engaged in to sell Apotex drugs to the U.S.

These drugs made for Canada did not have the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the U.S. market; they were provided by Apotex to some small companies – Interpharm, Silver Bullet Marketing and others – controlled by Sherman and his brother-in-law, Allen Barry Shechtman, operating from the Apotex company site, and sold by mail to the U.S. consumers without the necessary prescriptions:

“Canada’s largest pharmaceutical drug manufacturer, Apotex Inc., is being probed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to find out how its generic drugs are reaching U.S. residents who do not have prescriptions for them.

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore are looking for evidence of violations of U.S. federal laws involving mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and the unlawful distribution of unapproved drugs. The RCMP have been helping the FBI with its investigation.

…

Besides Apotex, the FBI probe includes the company’s president, Bernard (Barry) Sherman, 50; his brother-in-law, Allen Barry Shechtman, 45, and Mr. Shechtman’s company, Silver Bullet Marketing.

Interpharm Inc., a Bahamian company whose ownership remains obscure, and several other Canadians and Canadian companies are also part of the investigation.

…

A spokesman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed that the agency had passed its file on the matter to the U.S. Justice Department.

…

Papers filed as part of civil suits with the Federal Court of Canada in Toronto and the U.S. District Court in Atlanta set out the way in which drugs manufactured in Toronto by Apotex are mailed to U.S. consumers.

…

It has used the mail-order method to sell about 60 generic drugs to U.S. consumers, including anti-AIDS drugs and naproxen, an anti- inflammatory used by arthritis patients.

…

But because the drugs are not approved in the United States, authorities there have no mechanism for applying quality controls or prescription restrictions.

…

The Apotex drugs are promoted by Interpharm in the United States by means of direct mailings and advertisements in newspapers and magazines aimed at groups such as the elderly, people with AIDS, veterans, the arthritic and heart patients.

The material says the drugs may be legally imported into the United States for personal use, and offers savings of as much as 60 per cent off the price of U.S. name-brand equivalents.

Bahamian records list the directors of Interpharm as two local trust-company officials, but its ownership is clouded in the secrecy provided by Bahamian law.

Court records show that one Interpharm direct mailing reached 500,000 U.S. households. Canadian telephone records show that between May, 1991, and February, 1992, Interpharm’s 1-800 telephone number – which was answered at the Silver Bullet premises in Toronto – received 12,812 calls. (The 800 number was originally listed to Apotex, but it was later transferred to Silver Bullet, the records show.) Financial records showing how much Apotex and Silver Bullet made from drug sales in the United States through Interpharm have been sealed by the court in Atlanta.

But evidence filed there showed that Apotex provided generic drugs it manufactured or bought in Canada to Silver Bullet.

The company operates out of premises owned by Apotex, less than 50 metres from the Apotex plant on Signet Drive in the Metro Toronto municipality of North York. Silver Bullet then acted as a marketing agency for Interpharm.”

(“FBI probes big Canadian drug firm Apotex products sold to U.S. residents without prescriptions”, by Peter Moon, June 19, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

There indeed was a real problem of ethics here. The owner of Canada’s leading pharmaceutical company was also, along with a family member, conducting direct mail-marketing of drugs into another country in disregard of that country’s government health regulations.

But I note that in such a illegal direct sale scheme the generic drugs could indeed be cheap, as much as 60% off the U.S. branded drug prices as Interpharm advertised, claiming it to be legal.

It appeared that Apotex had earlier done the mail selling when it was allowed by the U.S. FDA, and then stopped after an FDA policy change:

“Apotex said in its release it did supply generic drugs to companies selling to the U.S. market “when it was the policy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration … to allow Americans to import drugs for personal use.”

That policy was issued July 23, 1988, by FDA Commissioner Frank Young at the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference and AIDS Forum in Boston, said Apotex, so that people with AIDS could get drugs that might combat the disease.

But Apotex stopped supplying products after the FDA changed its policy so that personal imports were no longer allowed, the company said.

“Apotex asserts that at no time has it, or any of its officers or directors, done anything unlawful,” the release said.

The Globe reported the FBI probe includes Mr. Sherman’s brother-in-law, Allen Barry Shechtman, 45, and his company, Silver Bullet Marketing.”

(“It’s harassment, Apotex says of FBI probe”, June 21, 1993, The Hamilton Spectator)

As asserted in the above, Sherman’s big company Apotex may have followed the U.S. government policy properly in its direct-mail selling; however, Sherman and his brother-in-law then used small companies operating at the fringe of this business field to continue the selling in violation of the U.S. regulations – that was most likely why the Interpharm-Silver Bullet 1-800 phone numbers for mail drug ordering had previously been Apotex’s as in the June 19, 1993 The Globe and Mail story quoted earlier.

As early as in January 1992, the U.S. FDA had sent letters warning of serious illegality to Sherman and Shechtman, and Bahamas-registered Interpharm with undisclosed ownership, stating that “these drugs and their solicitation are in serious violation of United States law, specifically the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”:

“The FDA, in warning letters sent to Mr. Sherman, Mr. Shechtman and Interpharm in January, 1992, said Interpharm “falsely represented the legitimacy” of its activities in labels and advertisements sent to U.S. residents.

The FDA said its review “has revealed that these drugs and their solicitation are in serious violation of United States law, specifically the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. . . . We are taking steps to warn our citizens that these drugs may not be legally marketed in this country.””

(Peter Moon, June 19, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

Then in March 1993, i.e., a few months before media reporting of the FBI criminal investigation, a U.S. District Court judge in Atlanta ruled that Sherman’s mail selling of drugs to the U.S. market represented a “threat to public health”:

“A U.S. District Court judge ruled in Atlanta in March that the export of the drugs from Canada to the United States involved “false representations in furtherance of . . . business interests” and represented a “threat to public health.”

…

In an affidavit sworn in February, Mr. Sherman said he believed that the Atlanta lawsuit was launched to punish him for making cheaper drugs available. “I believe the real motive for the present suit is to inflict revenge on Apotex and me as an officer of Apotex because of Apotex’s actions in providing low-price, safe and effective drugs to the public.””

(Peter Moon, June 19, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

I note that the U.S. judge’s ruling of “threat to public health” came after reviewing a sworn affidavit by Sherman in February making his point of “providing low-price, safe and effective drugs to the public.”

As quoted from the June 19, 1993 The Globe and Mail story, the FBI criminal investigation was already a next step – following the FDA’s – in the U.S. government’s efforts to stop Barry Sherman’s illegal mail-selling of drugs to the U.S. market.

Perhaps this next step was influenced by Morton Shulman, who bragged about it in his autobiography according to a January 15, 1994 Toronto Star article quote earlier.

Certain details of the drug mailing reported by the FBI showed that these small companies of Sherman’s were well aware that it was illegal activity requiring hiding of their identities and evading U.S. Customs inspections:

“The process worked as follows: Silver Bullet in North York answered calls made by U.S. residents who dialled a 1-800 number advertised in the United States by Interpharm of the Bahamas.

Silver Bullet then mailed the drugs in blister packets to the U.S. addresses. The drugs were sent in hand-addressed envelopes with no return address on them. Instead of using a postage meter, which would include an identification number, Silver Bullet employees stuck Canadian postage stamps on the envelopes.

The FBI report noted that after the FDA warning letters were sent Silver Bullet changed the colour of the envelopes it used to mail the drugs to the United States.

“It should be noted that the envelopes used are a very nondescript type that will bear three Canadian stamps and reflect no return address,” the FBI report said.

“The average customs inspector would be unable to recognize the parcel as a commercial piece of mail containing a ‘blister pack’ with approximately 100 tablets inside. Because of this tactic, FDA efforts to interdict the product at the Canadian border have met with little success.””

(Peter Moon, June 19, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

Due to its potential health risks, both the FBI and the FDA also declared – even more gravely than the U.S. District Court judge cited earlier – that the mail selling of drugs “constitutes a significant threat to the health of the U.S. consumer”:

“The report said that “any time a call is made to purchase these drugs, the consumer is asked for the name of his or her doctor and doctor’s phone number. It has been documented in every single case (investigated) that no confirmation call is ever placed to the consumer’s physician by the subject after an order is received.

“Because of this, the FBI and FDA believe that the continued sale of unapproved generic drugs into the United States constitutes a significant threat to the health of the U.S. consumer.””

(Peter Moon, June 19, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

This direct-mail selling case also showed how unrelenting Barry Sherman was in advancing his generic drugs’ reach. Even after Judge Horace Ward, the U.S. District Court judge in Atlanta overseeing a civil lawsuit from the U.S. drug company Syntex, ordered an injunction against Interpharm in March 1993, Sherman told the judge he wanted to continue selling through a “sister” company named Medicine Club International:

“On March 18, U.S. District Court Judge Horace Ward issued a preliminary injunction in Atlanta against Mr. Sherman, Mr. Shechtman, Apotex and Interpharm.

They were defendants in a civil action brought by Syntex (USA) Inc. Syntex is the U.S. manufacturer of naproxen, which is sold under the brand name of Naprosyn.

Syntex is alleging unfair competition, trademark infringement and violations of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act.

All four defendants contend in their brief to the court that they have broken no U.S. laws. They note that Syntex has sued Apotex unsuccessfully several times in Canada, and they say the U.S. action is an attempt to accomplish in that country what it failed to do in Canada, “namely destroy Interpharm.”

The injunction ordered the defendants to stop claiming that their naproxen meets U.S. standards, has been approved by the FDA and may be imported legally into the United States for personal use.

“The court has found that defendants’ representations that the quality of their products is identical to United States standards are literally false,” Judge Ward said.

Evidence presented to Judge Ward showed that the export of Apotex’s drugs to the United States began in 1989, soon after Mr. Shechtman left the entertainment and publishing business. Mr. Sherman placed him on the Apotex payroll at $1,400 a week and provided him with company insurance. A few weeks later, the marketing scheme involving Silver Bullet and Interpharm was begun.

Mr. Sherman, Mr. Shechtman and Interpharm recently told Judge Ward that they want to continue exporting drugs through a “sister” company called Medicine Club International Inc. They have filed an advertisement they want to use and asked the judge whether it can be used without contravening his injunction order.

Syntex has filed an objection, saying the continued importing of drugs into the United States without FDA approval is a breach of U.S. law.”

(Peter Moon, June 19, 1993, The Globe and Mail)

As cited above – and not unlike in Apotex’s patent dispute with GlaxoSmithKline in 2003, discussed earlier – the U.S. judge found that the Apotex generic version marketed by Interpharm did not meet the U.S. quality standards.

One can see from what a U.S. civil lawsuit proceeding revealed, that with or without Morton Shulman’s involvement, Barry Sherman’s aggressive push, despite warnings of it involving “serious violation of United States law”, could sooner or later lead to a U.S. criminal investigation of him and his companies.

In contrast, in the Canadian court as noted in the above story, the U.S. company Syntex had filed lawsuits several times but had been unsuccessful every time – a top favourable factor in the Canadian court was no doubt the Canadian lawyers whom Sherman and Apotex spent a lot of money on.

In the case of Shulman’s drug for Parkinson’s disease, Apotex actually had a generic version selling by mail to the U.S. market as of early 1994, and was facing a lawsuit from the U.S. company Somerset Pharmaceuticals that owned the patent:

“The head of Canada’s largest generic drug maker has been ordered to testify as part of an American lawsuit against him and his company.

Barry Sherman, president of Apotex Inc., can’t escape testifying in the civil lawsuit by Somerset Pharmaceuticals Inc., Judge Ellen Macdonald of the Ontario Court of Justice, general division, has ruled.

Somerset argues Apotex and related companies are illegally selling deprenyl in the United States by telephone and mail order.

Somerset has a patent on the drug in the United States. It alleges Apotex, through a variety of related companies, has been selling a selegiline hydrochloride, the chemical name for the product it sells as Eldepreyl.

The drug is used to treat Parkinson’s disease and is sold in Canada as Eldepreyl by Deprenyl Research Ltd., a company founded by Morty Shulman.”

(Art Chamberlain, January 28, 1994, Toronto Star)

As the above news story told, Sherman as Apotex president did not want to testify in court on this U.S. company lawsuit, and Ontario Judge Ellen Macdonald ruled that he must testify.

In my guess, a topic Sherman may have wanted to avoid testifying in court about could be the difference between the companies Interpharm and Apotex:

“The judge rejected arguments that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should protect Sherman and the others. The case is a private matter, so the Charter does not apply, she said.

Somerset said the Apotex drugs were being sold by a Bahamian direct mail company with a telephone link to Toronto.

Sherman told The Star’s Tracey Tyler his company stopped selling generic drugs to international firms for distribution in the U.S. out of concern the practice might offend U.S. law.”

(Art Chamberlain, January 28, 1994, Toronto Star)

As told above, Sherman asserted that his company had stopped selling drugs to international firms for distribution in the U.S.; that company was Apotex as reviewed earlier. But a “Bahamian direct mail company”, namely Interpharm, with 1-800 phone numbers answered by Silver Bullet Marketing at the Apotex site as reviewed earlier, continued to sell to the U.S. market.

Apotex’s huge expenditure on lawyers to tangle with the brand-name drug companies gave Sherman the luxury of trying to evade undesirable legal consequences or inconveniences resulting from his business practice; even though he had to testify in a U.S. civil lawsuit as a Canadian judge ruled in January 1994, the FBI criminal investigation might not be that serious anymore as noted by Judge Macdonald:

“The Somerset case is set to go to trial in Florida in April, but Sherman and the other parties had refused to be examined by Somerset’s lawyers.

They argued before Macdonald that Somerset was simply on a fishing expedition, but she rejected that suggestion.

Sherman also argued there have been reports that he is subject to a criminal investigation and should not be ordered to testify against himself.

Macdonald said that “aside from media reports, there is no evidence that a criminal investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.””

(Art Chamberlain, January 28, 1994, Toronto Star)

I wonder if, as a part his settlement with Shulman reported in November 1993, discussed earlier, Sherman got Shulman’s agreement to get the FBI to ease the criminal investigation of him and his companies.

If so, the former crusading Chief Coroner of Ontario and Toronto was a little too easy to settle, and too quick to brag about it to the media, because soon in this above news story dated January 28, 1994, Sherman was cited – as quoted earlier – that Apotex was “developing a generic version of deprenyl to sell in Canada”.

As mentioned earlier, besides a high-profile $1 million lawsuit by Apotex against Morton Shulman reviewed earlier, there was a separate legal case between Shulman’s Deprenyl Research and Sherman’s Apotex regarding the latter’s generic drug move. Soon in April 1994, Shulman’s company lost that legal dispute in the Federal Court:

“Parkinson’s disease sufferers could soon save “millions of dollars” as a result of a Federal Court of Canada decision, a generic drug manufacturer says.

The court dismissed an application by Deprenyl Research Ltd. of Toronto, a brand name manufacturer, to prevent the government from licensing a cheaper generic version of one of its most profitable drugs.

Deprenyl officials say the company is planning an appeal of the Federal Court ruling as well as other unspecified legal action.

Deprenyl argued in its court application that any move to licence a generic equivalent would violate its patent.

…

But Associate Chief Justice James Jerome ruled the patent applies only to the process used to produce Eldepryl.

He said it does not cover the essential ingredient, selegiline hydrochloride, or the use of the medicine itself.

The decision means Apotex can proceed with its application to have its cheaper version of the drug licensed.”

(“Parkinson’s boon: Federal licence OK for generic Eldepryl”, April 29, 1994, Times – Colonist)

I note that Associate Chief Justice James Jerome’s ruling essentially sided with Sherman and Apotex, whose main argument as earlier quoted from Shulman’s autobiography was that they would use a different method than Shulman’s company’s to produce the drug.

The above news story quoted Deprenyl Research officials as saying that the company would appeal the court decision that favoured Apotex.

But barely a month later in May 1994, Shulman’s company decided to change its name to Draxis Health from Deprenyl Research – now that it would have a generic drug competitor to its drug deprenyl, marketed as Eldepryl – and readjust its focus:

“Deprenyl Research Ltd. has taken some final steps to put the Morton Shulman era behind it.

The company emerged from its annual meeting yesterday with a new name – Draxis Health Inc. – a new corporate structure and a new share option program for senior management.

President Martin Barkin said the name change reflects the company’s new focus on products other than Eldepryl, a treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Draxis recently lost a court battle and expects generic drug maker Apotex Ltd. to have a cheaper version of Draxis’s main product on the market later this year.

To reduce losses, Draxis has joined forces with Novopharm Ltd., Canada’s other major generic drug maker, to produce a cheaper version before Apotex does.”

(“Deprenyl change ends Shulman era; Company to be called Draxis and get new focus”, by Art Chamberlain, May 27, 1994, Toronto Star)

As the above story exclaimed, the name change was a part of “some final steps” to the end of “the Morton Shulman era”.

Then in 1995, there was a sort of consolation for Shulman in his crusade against Sherman – from the FBI criminal investigation, but no longer targeting Sherman personally.

Medicine Club International, as cited earlier the Bahamas-based Interpharm’s “sister” company that in 1993 Sherman and his brother-in-law Shechtman had told U.S. Judge Horace Ward would continue to sell drugs by mail in the United States, pleaded guilty to “illegal interstate commerce” and agreed to pay the maximum fine of $500,000:

“A Bahamian company has been fined $500,000 (U.S.) for selling a Canadian-manufactured generic drug in the United States without government approval.

The fine, the maximum allowed under U.S. law, is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into how U.S. residents were obtaining generic drugs from Canada, without prescriptions and without the drugs having been approved for sale by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration.

According to a plea agreement filed with the U.S. Federal Court in Greenbelt, Md., last Thursday, the drugs were manufactured by Apotex Ltd. of Toronto, Canada’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, and distributed illegally in the United States by Medicine Club International Inc., a Bahamian trading company whose ownership was not filed in court documents.

Medicine Club, which pleaded guilty to one count of illegal interstate commerce, also agreed to pay $339,074 toward the U.S. government’s investigative costs.

In addition, Medicine Club established a $1-million letter of credit that would be forfeited to the U.S. government if it, Apotex or several other Canadian or Bahamian companies became involved again in the manufacture or distribution of unapproved drugs in the United States during the next five years.

The court ruled that the $1-million would also be forfeited if Bernard (Barry) Sherman, Apotex’s president, his brother-in-law, Allen Barry Shechtman, or six other directors or employees of Apotex became involved in the illegal distribution of drugs in the United States during the five-year period.”

(“Firm fined for illegally distributing Canadian-made drug”, by Peter Moon, January 11, 1995, The Globe and Mail)

Nothing was wrong, Sherman proclaimed, just “a business decision” to pay a fine:

“Mr. Sherman said in an interview that the FBI investigation and the subsequent criminal charge against Medicine Club occurred only because “the FDA was under immense pressure from the American drug companies to stop the personal imports (to U.S. residents from Canada).”

He noted that U.S. government tests showed that Apotex drugs that reached the United States through Medicine Club passed all the FDA’s safety tests.

Medicine Club’s guilty plea “was a business decision,” he said. “In fact, there’s no basis for any suggestion that anything improper was done, in my view.””

(Peter Moon, January 11, 1995, The Globe and Mail)

In 1997, Apotex received Canadian government approval to sell its generic version of Shulman’s drug, whereas Shulman’s former company refocused its business onto selling Anipryl, a new drug for treating dogs for Cushing’s disease, in Canada as well as entering the U.S. market:

“Management at the Mississauga-based company has high hopes that Anipryl, a drug approved last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating canine Cushing’s disease, could eventually fetch the bulk of the company’s sales.

“We are very excited to have received the FDA approval,” said Martin Barkin, company president and chief executive officer.

Since last September, monthly sales of Anipryl have shown “steady growth,” and annual sales in Canada are projected to reach $1-million.

The drug was launched this week in the United States, where the veterinary sales market is estimated to be 15 times larger than Canada’s.

“My expectation is that we will be doing 50 per cent of our business in the United States by the end of 1998 — and at least two-thirds of that from Anipryl,” Dr. Barkin said.

…

“The United States is one-third of the worldwide pharmaceuticals market,” said Dr. Barkin, a former Ontario deputy minister of health. He sees Anipryl as Draxis’s first big step into the U.S. market.

“We’ve gone with a much larger launch [for Anipryl] than we’ve ever had in Canada,” Dr. Barkin said. “There’s 250 reps in the field for the launch and 150 telemarketers to market it in the U.S.”

…

Aside from developing and marketing animal health products, Draxis sells pharmaceutical products for humans that treat disorders of the central nervous system, skin and bones. One of the company’s better known products is Eldepryl, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease.

…

In 1993, in an attempt to fend off competition from generic manufacturers, Draxis forged a distribution alliance with Novopharm Ltd. of Toronto to market Novo-Selegiline, Draxis’s own generic version of Eldepryl. In February, Apotex Inc. of Toronto announced it had received Canadian regulatory approval to sell a generic version of Eldepryl.”

(“Stock in the news: Analysis Draxis looks to U.S. market for sales; Canine drug Anipryl launched south of border following FDA approval”, by Andrew Poon, June 11, 1997, The Globe and Mail)

With my review, to this point, of the past media coverage I can now apprehend why Morton Shulman once described Barry Sherman as a person “with no redeeming features whatsoever”. It was clearly a sentiment from his very personal experience, but it was not illogical.

In a first-person account from his co-authored autobiography, Shulman told of a deeply personal and emotional story about Barry Sherman’s brazenness and nastiness exerting pressure on him to give up his brand-name drug patent protection, and about his fighting back by hiring private detectives to investigate Sherman’s illegal cross-border direct-mail drug selling:

“Did I ever tell you my story of Barry Sherman?

I was summoned by him in 1990, a few months after we got approval from the HPB for Eldepryl, one of my brokers called – Arnie Polan from Scotia McLeod – and said, “Barry Sherman would like to see you.”

I said, “Who’s Barry Sherman?”

“Sherman is one of the richest men in Canada. He makes more money than anydody else. He’s got the biggest generic drug company. He wants you to see him. He wants you to come to his office.”

He took me and Arnie on a tour of the place. It was wonderful. State-of-the-art; it’s a monstrous place, and he said, “I want Deprenyl and I want you to sign a contract with me and give me the rights to produce a generic competitor in June of 1993.”

This was February 1990.

I said, “Why should I give it to you?” And he said, “Because, if you don’t, I’m going to knock you off.” I said, “What’s this crap I always read in the paper where you’re saying you’re a patriotic Canadian, and you drive down the price for the multi-nationals?” And he said, “Never mind that bullshit; I want it and I’m going to have it and you’ll get a 5 per cent royalty and I’ll give you $50,000 in advance, or you’ll get nothing and I’ll take it.”

So, I went and hired Percy Parks, who went to work on him. Sherman made a lot of money legitimately, but he was greedy, and he was running an operation from Nassau called Silver Bullet Pharmaceuticals, and he was advertising in American magazines – “Prescription drugs at half price, no prescription necessary, send your check to Silver Bullet” – and when detectives traced Silver Bullet back to Toronto, it was just a mail drop.

The money was sent there, came back to Toronto and was given to D.

D. took it over to Apotex and he would take shipment of all the drugs from Apotex.

And, somehow, the situation went into the hands of the FDA, just – somehow!

You don’t know how delighted we were. And he had problems and he was too busy to worry about me.”

(Dr. Morton Shulman and Susan Kastner, 1993, Warwick Publishing Group)

Again, as recalled by Morton Shulman, Barry Sherman’s behaviour conducting business negotiation in private was in stark contrast to his public image as a compassionate and generous philanthropist, in this occasion referring to his crafted media image of “a patriotic Canadian” as “bullshit”, and making such threats to the small businessman Shulman as, “I’m going to knock you off” and “you’ll get nothing and I’ll take it”.

A different kind of “Robin Hood”, perhaps, who had no problem threatening to “knock off” a small Canadian business owner, but who also had the thought of himself being “knocked off” by Big Pharma – “the monopolies” as Sherman called the brand-name drug companies, as quoted earlier from Jeffrey Robinson’s 2001 book.

Irrespective of Apotex’s legal victory over Shulman’s company, my review thus far of some high-profile legal cases involving Sherman’s practice in the generic drug business field – including the very personal Sherman-Shulman dispute – has come upon matters of serious concern regarding the ethics of Sherman’s schemes and tactics.

So at this point, I can say that the use of the label “unethical” by some to describe Barry Sherman’s conduct in business, such as “unethical in business dealings” according to the April 2018 Maclean’s investigative article, and “unethical in business” as asserted by the law and medicine professor Amir Attaran, is justifiable.

Similar to it has been the opinion of U.S. Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks stated in 2013, who referred to Sherman’s behaviour as “egregious misconduct”:

“Canada’s generic drug king found himself on the wrong side of several shaking fingers in the past year. After Health Canada demanded a recall of Apotex’s mispackaged birth control pills (they contained too many placebos and not enough medication), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration threatened to block Apotex products for “repeated deficiencies,” including bacterial contamination. Meanwhile, a Florida judge ruled against the pharmaceutical company in a lawsuit where Apotex claimed Brussels-based UCB infringed on its patent for a manufacturing process for a blood pressure medication. United States District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks had some harsh words for Sherman, who took the stand himself. “Dr. Sherman engaged in affirmative and egregious misconduct” throughout the patent prosecution, Judge Middlebrooks wrote.”

(“A great year for billionaires”, December 9, 2013, Canadian Business)

The brief press summary above also reported that some Apotex generic drugs had serious defects, such as “too many placebos and not enough medication”, and “repeated deficiencies”, that have drawn disciplinary responses from both Canadian and U.S. government health regulators.

The Apotex drugs’ deficiencies were “repeated” according to the U.S. FDA.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the deficiencies were quite persistent, because in my review so far there were also a 2003 court ruling on a dispute with GlaxoSmithKline and a 1993 court ruling on a dispute with Syntex, stating that Apotex drugs might not contain sufficient active ingredients or did not meet U.S. quality standards; furthermore, as already discussed in detail, in a 1993 court affidavit for a civil case former Ontario Chief Coroner Morton Shulman, then a practising MD, expressed his “reasonable doubts with respect to (Apotex) and its products” – doubts regarding their “efficacy”.

As for Sherman’s “affirmative and egregious misconduct” censured by Judge Middlebrooks, I have not found media coverage of the details.

Barry Sherman may have qualified as a Canadian business legend, and a Canadian industry hero, but if and when the conduct by him and his company could carry serious ramifications to many medicine consumers around the world, the media should not avoid the controversy – not in a mature democracy with a genuine degree of press freedom.

The Sherman-Shulman dispute, due to Morton Shulman’s long-time popular public profile, received considerable media attention in 1993-1994 as did, in that same atmosphere, the FBI investigation of Barry Sherman and his companies. Media coverage of these events has served as a ‘beacon of light’ in my review to understand some history of consequential relevance.

Medicines that were developed and sold in violation of existing patents, and medicines that did not satisfy required quality standards, were typically viewed by brand-name drug companies, especially Big Pharma with its bias, as “counterfeits”, admitted author Jeffrey Robinson in his book:

“As the market for legitimate prescription drugs has grown to a colossal size, the market for illegal prescription drugs has grown alongside it.

These are illicit generics made by companies in direct violation of patent protection; counterfeit drugs that contain no active ingredients but are packaged and priced like the real thing; and substandard drugs that contain some active ingredients and are sold as the real thing but do not meet pharmacopoeial standards. Because it serves Big Pharma’s interests, illegal prescription drugs get grouped together under the heading of counterfeits. When the word “generic” can be tossed into the pot, they deliberately tar legitimate generics with the same brush as counterfeits, trying to confuse the issues of bioequivalence and counterfeit drugs to create the impression that the two words are interchangeable.”

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

As my review has shown, the repeated deficiencies of Apotex drugs, coupled with Barry Sherman’s law-breaking aggressive push of generics – putting them directly on the market in violation of existing patents and mail selling them across national border in violation of relevant regulations – have put some of Sherman’s and Apotex’s pharmaceutical business practice into the “counterfeit” domain – from the brand-name drug companies’ perspective.

It wasn’t only Morton Sherman who once hired private detectives to investigate Sherman’s businesses, but also some in Big Pharma who viewed Sherman and Apotex as “counterfeiters”.

Robinson’s book told of a story where Paul Whybrow, a former London police officer and the British police’s first undercover detective specifically dealing with financial fraud, joined a leading private investigation agency working, under a man named only as “Mr. Jones”, on counterfeit drugs and patent violations in the pharmaceutical industry, a field that offered big money to private investigation agencies in Europe – not unlike it did law firms in Canada as discussed earlier:

“Because it worked so well the first time, Whybrow was sent undercover a second time. Within a few months, his superiors realized that he had a real talent for this. So they gave him a new identity, a passport to match, a credit card and a bank account in his new name, and a safe-house address. Just like that, the City of London Police had the first official undercover officer in the entire country specifically to deal with financial fraud.

…

So Whybrow decided to call it a day. … Within one week, Carratu International, one of Europe’s leading private investigation agencies, offered him a job. He was taken to lunch by a man – call him Mr. Jones – who said the firm needed someone to work undercover in its pharmaceutical division to collect evidence of counterfeit drugs and of patent and trademark infringements.

At Carratu, just as they are in so many private detective agencies, pharmaceuticals are a big money market.

…

There were jobs for AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Glaxo Wellcome, Bayer, and Roche. After that, there were also jobs that took him through the back door. While he insists that no one ever asks anyone to do anything illegal, everyone who plays this game knows what evidence is needed. …”

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

When Mr. Jones became the lead private investigator for the German brand-name drug giant Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Whtbrow and another ex-cop Mick Flack were recruited to set up their own agency, which they called Temple Associates, to work for Mr. Jones and one of their first cases was to investigate Barry Sherman and Apotex:

“One of Carratu’s clients, the German giant Bayer Pharmaceuticals, started finding these so-called grey market drugs in pharmacies only a few blocks from its factory in Leverkusen. So Whybrow was dispatched to Switzerland to gather evidence against the culprit.

…

What Whybrow didn’t yet know was that Jones had a serious falling out with the management at Carratu. One day, just like that, Jones was gone. Whybrow, together with another ex-cop working at Carratu named Mick Flack, went to see Jones and found him very down in the dumps. They did whatever they could to encourage him, to assure him that he’d find another job somewhere. A few months later, Jones seemed to land on his feet, employed by Carratu’s own client, Bayer AG.

Remembering the guys who’d stood by him, Jones offered Whybrow and Flack the opportunity to leave Carratu and form their own agency. He told them he was controlling all of Bayer’s investigations, had a budget worth around £1.4 million for patent protection, and that Carratu would never get a penny of it. He told them, “You two start a business and you can have the lot.”

They were reluctant at first, but the offer was simply too good to turn down. So Whybrow and Flack set up a company called Temple Associates in Covent Garden, and went back to work for Jones.

One of the first cases he put them on to was Barry Sherman and Apotex.”

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

Mr. Jones was “obsessed with Sherman”, viewing him as “a real thorn”, “a major infringer” to be “taken down”:

““As far as Jones was concerned, Barry Sherman was a real thorn in his side. He was obsessed with Sherman, convinced that he was a major infringer, and he wanted him taken down. I’d been out to Canada on behalf of Carratu, gone through the front door of Apotex, and had an interview. Mick and I then went out to Canada together, and sat around watching the trucks going into the loading bays at the rear of the plant. We dressed in overalls and carried clipboards and walked around the loading bays to see what was coming in and going out. Sometimes we even carried a box with some stuff in it, just in case someone asked us what we were doing there. …

Not far from the Apotex loading bay was an area with picnic tables where employees would have lunch. So Whybrow and Flack sat there eating hot dogs for a couple of days, always taking notes.

“Maybe we did a week’s surveillance around the back. But the security is pretty tight at Apotex and you can forget about getting in there after hours. …””

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

Fortunately for Sherman and Apotex, in this particular private investigation the covert onsite surveillance turned up nothing incriminating. But Mr. Jones did not give up, and pressured Whybrow and Flack on the prospect of planting evidence to frame Sherman, to “get this bastard Sherman” and “take him out of the game”:

“They reported back to Jones that they didn’t yet have what he wanted. He asked them to try to get a mole inside the company, and they felt they could arrange that. But that wasn’t enough for Jones. Now he came to England to meet with Whybrow and Flack.

“We had lunch together at a country pub,”, Whybrow alleges, “and all the time, Jones is thinking about how he can get Sherman. This is no longer just business, this is personal. He doesn’t just want to compromise him in a corporate way. He’s talking about playing hardball with Barry Sherman. It was very direct. He said to us, ‘We have to get this bastard Sherman.’ He said to us, ‘What are we going to do about him? Let’s take him out of the game. Take him out.’ Mick and I both knew enough not to say anything. He could have been wired. We weren’t going to commit ourselves to anything. But Jones was suggesting everything.”

According to Whybrow and Flack, the conversation then went like this:

Jones: “What can we do?”

Whybrow: “What do you want us to do?”

Jones: “What about your contacts with the police in Canada? Could you get him stopped?’

Whybrow: “Anything’s possible.”

Jones: “Let’s say he had half a kilo in his boot.”

Whybrow insists that neither he nor Flack said anything about this.

Jones: “What’s his sexual preference? Could we get him hooked up with little girls, or even underaged boys?”

Again, Whyborw says, he and Flack refused to get drawn into this. They knew better. But, Whybrow maintains, Jones was adamant.

Jones: “We’ve got to take him off the scene. Got to take him out.””

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

Mr. Jones stated that getting Sherman was not just business, but “personal”. So it looked like that he, or much more likely his employer Bayer Pharmaceuticals, had some serious grudges against Barry Sherman – much like Morton Shulman who took his drug business dispute with Sherman very personally.

It was in this context, i.e., when author Robinson told him about these European private investigators’ story, that Sherman made his comment on the prospect of being “knocked off”, i.e., “killed”, that has previously been quoted partially from the April 2018 Maclean’s investigative article and fully from Robinson’s book; and here once again, Sherman’s words are quoted but in the broader context:

“In fairness, Whybrow adds, Jones never actually asked him to do anything illegal. All he wanted them to do, they insist, was “whatever it takes.” Whybrow thought Jones a bit reckless. But Jones never said to them, do it. Jones never asked them to commit a crime.

Whybrow now thinks Jones was really on some sort of fishing expedition. “He was looking to find out from us what we could do. He wanted Sherman taken out, but I don’t know what his solution was. He might not even have had one. Even if he did, it wasn’t going to be easy because Sherman is a very sharp operator.”

When the conversation was repeated to Sherman, he didn’t seem surprised. “The branded drug companies hate us. They have private investigators on us all the time. The thought once came to my mind, why didn’t they just hire someone to knock me off? For a thousand bucks paid to the right person you can probably get someone killed. Perhaps I’m surprised that hasn’t happened.””

(Jeffrey Robinson, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)

As the ex-police detective Paul Whybrow noted, Barry Sherman was a “very sharp operator”. In the interview with author Robinson, Whybrow listed the schemes Mr. Jones had once suggested to use to frame Sherman, such as planting banned narcotics as evidence, or using “little girls” or “underaged boys” to trap him, and yet Whybrow still claimed that he did not know what Mr. Jones’s “solution” was; later when told of this story, Sherman quite probably would think of something worse. 

In spite of Barry Sherman’s flaws, author Jeffrey Robinson of the intriguing 2001 book has expressed his opinion that the Shermans’ double murder was not carried out by his “Big Pharma enemies”, because “Big Pharma doesn’t take out hits on people, at least not in North America”:

“… Robinson doubts one of Sherman’s Big Pharma enemies took out a contract on him.

“Big Pharma doesn’t take out hits on people, at least not in North America,” Robinson said. “They’ll plant a kilo of cocaine in the trunk of your car or embed kiddie porn on your computer but they won’t murder you.””

(Brad Hunter, February 1, 2018, Toronto Sun)

Mr. Robinson’s argument is learned and persuasive – he cites means similar to what Mr. Jones once suggested to the Temple Associates investigators according to the latter, as what Big Pharma would do only – but in my opinion should not be taken as conclusive. This double murder was so rare that it could well be an exception to the norm – considering how “egregious” Barry Sherman’s schemes and tactics had been in his business moves and legal battles.

When this businessman, in the drive to realize his generic drug ambitions and expand his businesses, relentlessly and aggressively flouted the laws and regulations, and yet his gargantuan business expenditures on lawyers ensured the steady growth of his success and fortune with barely a scratch of consequences for his “egregious misconduct”, who knows what some of the brand-name drug enemies of Barry Sherman’s could resort to?

(Continuing to Part 2)

A review of postings about scientific integrity and intellectual honesty, with observations regarding elite centrism – Part 5: inventions, innovations, and ushering of ‘the new normal’ (ii)

(Continued from Part 5 (i))

In 1982 receiving my bachelor’s degree in computer science at Sun Yat-sen University in China, my first choice for Ph.D. study was not a mathematics department, as much as the world’s largest and one of the best UC Berkeley’s was where I later received my Ph.D., but the Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics program in the Stanford University computer science department, as discussed in Part 4.

Stanford’s computer science department, then considered the best in the world as I recall, also had its intellectual origin in the National Bureau of Standards’ Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA, a historically unique mathematical computing research institution reviewed in Part 5 (i).

George Forsythe, a Stanford numerical analyst instrumental in establishing the department and serving as its founding chairman, had been a key member of the INA at UCLA until the institute was terminated in 1954, at which point he became a UCLA mathematics professor until moving to Stanford in 1957:

“George E. Forsythe was the first regular member of research staff of INA. He came to INA with a strong background in the application of mathematics to meteorology. He was a universalist in the sense that he collaborated with all members of the research staff and with other members of INA. He was very active in the computational aspects of the projects pursued at INA. He also became a leader in the educational program of the Institute. …

…

George E. Forsythe was one of the senior members of INA who remained with NAR. He soon was given a faculty appointment in the Department of Mathematics, where he was in charge of the educational program in numerical analysis. … In 1957 Forsythe received a very attractive offer of a faculty position at Stanford University, which would enable him to set up a program of his own. He accepted this offer. …”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, Mathematicians Learning to Use Computers: The Institute for Numerical Analysis UCLA 1947-1954, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

The NAR cited above which Forsythe remained with after INA’s closure due to McCarthyism-related politics was Numerical Analysis Research, as mentioned in Part 5 (i), the group of former INA members staying as UCLA math faculty members.

While at INA, Forsythe utilized his abilities and expertise to take initiatives and lead research projects:

“… Rosser and Forsythe were chiefly responsible for the study of systems of linear equations. Forsythe, in particular, undertook the task of classifying the various known methods for solving systems of linear equations.

…

Forsythe initiated a study of Russian mathematical progress which led to the publication of a bibliography of Russian books [24]. Pertinent articles by Russians were collected and selected ones were translated into English by C. D. Benster under the editorships of Forsythe and Blanch. Some translations were published commercially [20,42]. Several appeared as NBS reports [49,59,90]. An informal, but important, result of this program was the initiation of a class in Russian for mathematicians at UCLA and INA.”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology)

The above-mentioned project initiated and led by Forsythe to translate Russian mathematics articles, and for mathematicians to learn the Russian language, must have been quite unusual at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s – it sounded more like in China, as in Part 4, when my future undergraduate thesis adviser Yuesheng Li was a student interpreter for a visiting Russian math professor.

Forsythe’s colleague J. Barkley Rosser mentioned in the above quote, as in Part 5 (i) was at one time INA’s director and later in 1963 became director of the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

My recollection that Stanford’s computer science department was the best in the early 1980s, was true at least in some concrete measure according to the book on INA history by Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, namely that under George Forsythe’s leadership it became “the most influential” CS department in the U.S., attracting almost as many National Science Foundation Fellows as all other CS departments combined:

… In 1961 he became Professor of Computer Science and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science. Under his leadership, this department became the most influential one in the country, attracting almost as many National Science Foundation Fellows as all other such departments combined. …”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology)

The year cited above, 1961, of Forsythe becoming the computer science department chairman is however incorrect. 1961 was when Forsythe founded the Computer Science Division within the Stanford mathematics department; the computer science department was later founded in 1965, capping Forsythe’s career that had included working as an Air Force meteorologist and introducing automatic computing to the Boeing Company:

“George was born on January 8, 1917, in State College, Pennsylvania, and moved as a small boy with his family to Ann Arbor, Michigan. His undergraduate work was at Swarthmore College, where he majored in Mathematics. His experience there had a strong influence on his life. His graduate study was in Mathematics at Brown University where he received his M.S. in 1938 and his Ph.D. in 1941. He then came to Stanford but his first year here was interrupted by service in the Air Force, in which he became a meteorologist. … He spent a year at Boeing where he introduced what may have been the first use of automatic computing in that company. He spent several years in the Institute for Numerical Analysis of the National Bureau of Standards, a special section located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the Institute because he wanted to watch the development of the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC), one of the first of the digital computers. …

Stanford acquired its first computer in 1953, and research and instruction in numerical mathematics and computation began to develop. Soon after this the Mathematics Department began to search for new leadership in this field, and George Forsythe was the unanimous choice of the faculty. It was in 1957 that he returned to Stanford, joining once again the Mathematics Department, this time as Professor. … Under his leadership, the Computer Science Division of the Mathematics Department was formed in 1961, and he began the slow process of gathering an outstanding group of colleagues.

The culmination of this effort was the founding of the Computer Science Department on January 1, 1965, by which time he had succeeded in attracting a nucleus of leading computer scientists. George was very skillful in bringing together many diverse points of view. … Of all his professional activities, building, and leading the department was closest to his heart. He did, however, contribute his leadership to Stanford in other but related tasks. He served as Director of the Stanford Computation Center from 1961 to 1965.  …

George had a nationwide influence on Computer Science education. The emergence of a discipline of Computer Science is due to his efforts more than to those of any other single person. …”

(“MEMORIAL RESOLUTION: GEORGE ELMER FORSYTHE (1917 – 1972)”, Computer Science Department, Stanford University)

As stated in the above 1972 Stanford memorial resolution on the occasion of his death, Forsythe had been more instrumental than any other person in “the emergence of a discipline of Computer Science”. In other words, Forsythe was not only the founder of a computer science department but in some sense a founding figure of the academic discipline of computer science.

Interestingly, this founding figure had been born in State College, Pennsylvania, a state where the electronic computer was later born; and he had grown up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of interest to me as the place of intellectual formation of my Ph.D. adviser Stephen Smale as in Part 2 – and coincidentally also the place the “father of computers” John von Neumann’s daughter Marina von Neumann Whitman has settled in as in Part 5 (i).

Around 1961, Forsythe began to advocate establishing computer science departments in universities, showing clear foresight for their curriculum composition, as recalled by his later Stanford colleague Donald E. Knuth:

“… It is generally agreed that he, more than any other man, is responsible for the rapid development of computer science in the world’s colleges and universities. His foresight, combined with his untiring efforts to spread the gospel of computing, have had a significant and lasting impact; one might almost regard him as the Martin Luther of the Computer Reformation!

…

In 1961, we find him using the term “computer science” for the first time in his writing:

…

By that time Forsythe knew that numerical analysis was destined to be only a part of the computing milieu; a new discipline was crystalizing which cried out to be taught. He had come to Stanford as a professor of mathematics in 1957, but now he and Professor John Herriot wanted to hire colleagues interested in programming, artificial intelligence, and such topics, which are not considered mathematics. Stanford’s administration, especially Dean Bowker (who is now Chancellor at Berkeley), also became convinced that computing is important; so George was able to found the Division of Computer Science within the Mathematics Department in 1961.

During that academic year he lectured on “Educational Implications of the Computer Revolution” at Brown University:

“… To think of a computer as made up essentially of numbers is simply a carryover from the successful use of mathematical analysis in studying models…Enough is known already of the diverse applications of computing for us to recognize the birth of a coherent body of technique, which I call computer science…Whether computers are used for engineering design, medical data processing, composing music, or other purposes, the structure of computing is much the same. We are extremely short of talented people in this field, and so we need departments, curricula, and research and degree programs in computer science…I think of the Computer Science Department as eventually including experts in Programming, Numerical Analysis, Automata Theory, Data Processing, Business Games, Adaptive Systems, Information Theory, Information Retrieval, Recursive Function Theory, Computer Linguistics, etc., as these fields emerge in structure…Universities must respond [to the computer revolution] with far-reaching changes in the educational structure.[60]”

…

… Louis Fein had also perceived the eventual rise of computer science; he had recommended in 1957 that Stanford establish a Graduate School of Computer Science, analogous to the Harvard Business School. …

George argued the case for computer science long and loud, and he won; at Stanford he was in fact “the producer and director, author, scene designer, and casting manager of this hit show.” …”

(“George Forsythe and the Development of Computer Science”, by Donald E. Knuth, August 1972, Volume 15, Number 8, Communications of the ACM)

As Knuth pointed out, Stanford’s Dean Bowker, later in 1972 UC Berkeley Chancellor, played an important role facilitating Forsythe’s founding of the computer science division in the math department.

It was thus sad that Forsythe, a distinguished numerical analyst, scientist, and founder figure in computer science, lived to only 55 years of age when he died on April 9, 1972, of pancreatic cancer.

(“George Elmer Forsythe”, by J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, November 2010, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland)

Forsythe, “almost … the Martin Luther of the Computer Reformation” according to Knuth, was only 2 years older than John von Neumann, the “father of computers”, at the time of his death in February 1957 due to cancer as detailed in Part 5 (i).

But at least Forsythe had not been exposed to work-related nuclear radiation like von Neumann had feared about himself, who had been involved in the Manhattan Project of atomic bomb development – rather, Forsythe had introduced automatic computing to Boeing aircraft manufacturing.

It turned out that in the 1960s Forsythe had already had skin cancer; still, his 1972 death came as a shock to his colleagues and former Ph.D. students, as they later recalled in July 1997:

“… Appropriately, a minisymposium at SIAM’s 45th Anniversary Meeting at Stanford commemorated the 25th anniversary of Forsythe’s death.

Rather than a formal review of Forsythe’s accomplishments, the memorial minisymposium, organized by Cleve Moler, chief scientist at The MathWorks and Forsythe’s eighth doctoral student, was a sort of Irish wake that celebrated the man as much as his science. …

To begin the conversation, Moler drew on a presentation about Forsythe given several months earlier by James Varah of the University of British Columbia, Forsythe’s 12th student. Varah had spent considerable time in Stanford’s Forsythe archives gathering material about Forsythe’s life and work.

…

Even after 25 years, the shock of Forsythe’s sudden illness and death seemed fresh to many of his friends. Moler somberly recalled Forsythe “telling me one day in his office that he had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon for a possible ulcer. Two weeks later he was dead.”

Knuth described writing a memorial article for him in the short week between Forsythe’s death and Knuth’s departure for a sabbatical in Norway. “His briefcase was still on top of his desk. In a drawer I found life expectancy rates for skin cancer, a disease he had in the 1960s. He knew he was ill.”

Parlett concurred: “He knew he was dying. He came to Berkeley to see me in 1971, the summer before he died. The visit wasn’t really needed. It was his way of saying goodbye.””

(“Remembering George Forsythe”, by Paul Davis, January 8, 1998, SIAM News, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

As quoted, Beresford Parlett, the Berkeley numerical analysis professor whom I considered a mentor, had been Forsythe’s Ph.D. student, as had been James Varah, the former UBC computer science department head who helped to offer me my job there following my Berkeley Ph.D. in 1988, as in Part 4.

The “minisymposium” in memory of Forsythe was held during SIAM’s 45th Anniversary Meeting at Stanford as cited above. It was the same SIAM meeting in July 1997 mentioned in Part 4 regarding a session, “Moving-Grid Methods for Partial Differential Equations”, which was organized by a former Berkeley math Ph.D. student from China who had prepared my living arrangement before my August 1982 arrival at Berkeley, and which included several numerical analyst presenters of intriguing backgrounds at Berkeley, British Columbia and some U.S. national laboratories.

As if tragedy would strike twice, about a month after the SIAM mini-symposium remembering Forsythe, his daughter Diana died of drowning while backpacking in Alaska, at the age of 49:

“Diana E. Forsythe, ’69, of Palo Alto, August 14, at 49, of drowning while backpacking in Alaska. A scholar who studied the culture of science and technology, she was the daughter of George Forsythe, founder of Stanford’s computer science department, and Alexandra Forsythe, whose teaching specialty at Stanford was the use of computers in education. Though she got her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore, she studied at the Stanford-in-Britain program during the 1967-68 year. After teaching anthropology and computer science at the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to Stanford in 1995 with a fellowship from the System Development Foundation; she was also a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. Her paper on the hidden cultural assumptions in the way computer systems are designed was published in December 1996. She joined the UCSF faculty this year as an associate professor in the medical anthropology program. Survivors include her husband, Bernard Shen.”

(“Obituaries”, November/December 1997, Stanford Magazine)

Somehow Diana Forsythe’s age when she died, 49, coincided with the month and day of her father’s death decades earlier, April 9. Her date of perishment, August 14, was exactly 30 days following the mini-symposium honoring her late father, held on July 15 and led by Cleve Moler of The MathWorks, another of George Forsythe’s former Ph.D. students.

(“A Tribute to the Memory of George Forsythe”, July 15, 1997, SIAM’s 45th Anniversary Meeting, Stanford University)

Closely following her father’s footsteps, Diana graduated from George Forsythe’s alma mater, Swarthmore College, then attended Stanford before getting a teaching job at the University of Pittsburgh.

I note that Marina von Neumann, whose application for Ph.D. study at Princeton – like the equivalent of Stanford for Diana Forsythe – had been rejected as in Part 5 (i), had also ended up teaching at the University of Pittsburgh.

(““The Martian’s Daughter” by Marina von Neumann Whitman”, October 2, 2012, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan)

From that point on, the critical career difference between the two daughters of famous fathers in the computing field was the lift Marina then received from President Richard Nixon in 1972 – coincidentally the year of George Forsythe’s death – to become the first female member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, as in Part 5 (i), which no doubt gave her credentials for her later appointment as a vice president of General Motors.

As taken into consideration in Part 5 (i), back in the 1950s Marina’s father, an important scientific adviser to the U.S. military, had been well acquainted with members of then President Dwight Eisenhower’s cabinet, with Nixon then the vice president.

For Diana there was no higher lift – none higher than where her father had founded and led the most influential computer science department in the U.S. – and she eventually returned to Stanford-related jobs, analyzing “hidden cultural assumptions” in the computer field, finally landing a UC San Francisco professorship just in the year she died in Alaska.

George Forsythe’s daughter Diana Forsythe had a much worse luck in life than John von Neumann’s daughter Marina Whitman – perhaps the degree of parental fame mattered for the next generation.

But it has been a consolation that following her death, Diana was immediately remembered in her anthropology discipline by the American Anthropological Association with the Diana Forsythe Prize honoring her spirit of “feminist anthropological research”:

“The Diana Forsythe Prize was created in 1998 to celebrate the best book or series of published articles in the spirit of Diana Forsythe’s feminist anthropological research on work, science, and/or technology, including biomedicine. …”

(“Awards: Diana Forsythe Prize”, GAD, American Anthropological Association)

Just like the “father of computers” John von Neumann not having been the first to develop the electronic computer, joining the World War II ENIAC project after it had started, George Forsythe, the most influential person in the emergence of the computer science discipline, wasn’t the first to advocate for it – that credit goes to Louis Fein, a name cited in Donald Knuth’s tribute to Forsythe.

Fein, a computing education consultant based in the Stanford area of Palo Alto, had begun campaigning for computer science in the mid-late 1950s, producing a report for Stanford University in 1957, and in 1960 taking the role of chairman of the Education Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery – as in Part 3, ACM has been the main international organization for computer science:

“… the earliest significant papers on CS education appear to be by Louis Fein who was a private consultant in California and a passionate supporter of CS education in universities. He wrote an unpublished report on computing education for Stanford University in 1957 and published three papers (Fein 1959a, 1959b, 1961) and was appointed chairman of the ACM Education Committee in 1960. …

In the two similar 1959 papers that were based on his work for Stanford University, Fein explains that he had been studying the operation of university programs in computing, data processing and related fields since 1956 by holding formal and informal discussions with university administrators, computer center directors, faculty members, students and industry representatives. … The most important impact on university programs at that time was IBM selling heavily discounted IBM 650s to about 50 universities on the condition that they would offer some computing courses. The universities were offering a variety of computer courses but, in Fein’s view, most universities were putting too much emphasis on the computing equipment and courses were being designed as supplements to the equipment when equipment ought to be a supplement to the courses. …

Fein had a clear vision for computer science education in universities and he appears to have been one of the first to call the field “Computer Science” when he suggested that universities establish a Graduate School of Computer Sciences …”

(“Computer Science Curriculum Developments in the 1960s”, by G. K. Gupta, April-June 2007, Volume 29, Issue 2, IEEE Annuals of the History of Computing)

Like George Forsythe, Louis Fein had moved from Southern California, though not from the INA at UCLA but from the military-oriented aerospace industry.

Fein had worked at the Raytheon Company as a chief engineer building the RADAC computer in Massachusetts, moved to Southern California to install it for the Navy, and then formed his own company which he referred to as the “Three C’s”, the Computer Control Company:

“FEIN: In 1954 and 1955, I was in southern California installing and operating at the Naval Air Missile Test Center at Point Magu the RADAC, the Raytheon digital automatic computer which I had built as chief engineer at Raytheon Manufacturing Company between 1948 and 1951. I had, after leaving Raytheon, formed the Computer Control Company which was an organization made up of people from Raytheon that worked for me. On October 30, 1952 I formed the Three C’s, Computer Control Company, because after the acceptance tests were passed for the RADAC, the RADAC was then whipped from Waltham, Massachusetts to Point Magu, that’s right outside of Oxnard. The Navy department asked me if I would go out to Point Magu together with some engineers and install and operate the computer center there. The RADAC was built and actually was intended for the data reduction at Point Magu. They insisted however that I must go personally. …”

(“An Interview with LOUIS FEIN”, interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In the above-cited May 9, 1979 interview by Pamela McCorduck, Fein recalled that on August 10, 1955, he left his company to become an independent consultant based in Palo Alto, especially for the Stanford Research Institute; in that capacity and at the request of Al Bowker, then Stanford Graduate Dean, he wrote a report for Stanford on starting computer science education:

FEIN: … In August 1955, for a variety of reasons, mostly administrative, I left Three C’s and decided that I would write, consult, and teach perhaps. As a matter of fact that was August 10, 1955. Immediately after leaving Three C’s. by August 11, I had, as I recall, seven or eight contacts already made, and by August 18, I was consulting for five or six computer outfits. … One of the first assignments I’d gotten was with SRI, the Stanford Research Institute then, who had a contract with the Bank of America to build what later became ERMA and they are right here in Menlo Park. I had also gotten an assignment from Sylvania Electronic Defense Laboratory to work on some computer hardware, and I also worked for Electro-Data, RCA, but I rather liked it up here and so we moved up to Palo Alto in January 1956. I was almost walking distance to SRI and to Sylvania and when I had to go down to Pasadena for Electro-Data or to Camden for RCA or to New York for IBM, I just went, but Palo Alto became my home base and I’ve lived here since. I’ve been a free lance independent computer consultant since August 10, 1955, which I believe also might be the longest in the world. … One of my friends introduced me to Al Bowker who is now the Chancellor at Berkeley, but then was the Provost at Stanford. I may not be remembering accurately; he was either Provost or Graduate Dean, and perhaps later became Provost. Al was interested in the proposals that IBM was making people of the following type: “We will give you a 650 for free if you will give a course in scientific computing and one in business computing.” And Al also had heard a little about this computing business and I suggested to him that I thought that computing fits in a university. I didn’t quite know how. But it was clear to me and apparently to him that computers would develop in such a way that most of the disciplines in the university would have need for them at least as auxiliary devices. The question of whether or not computer science, not yet the computer itself, was a discipline worthy of study by the university was not yet settled but in my enthusiasm I thought it might be and so Al Bowker commissioned me to make a study on what might be called “The Role of the University in Computers and Data Processing.” …”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

SRI was the same institute the Silicon Valley pioneer Douglas Engelbart went to, as in Part 5 (i), after leaving UC Berkeley in 1956 and finding out that both Stanford University and the Hewlett-Packard Company had no vision at the time for computer development. Fein had arrived a little earlier, in January 1956 as quoted above, immediately participating in SRI’s ERMA computer project for Bank of America.

ERMA was “the world’s first computer used in banking”, unveiled in September 1955 in a transcontinental videoconference hosted by the actor Ronald Reagan, a future U.S. president.

(“Our Story: Bank of America revolutionizes banking industry”, Bank of America)

While campaigning for computer science, Louis Fein found, in his interactions in the late 1950s with computing pioneers in the academia, that many – including George Forsythe, and UC Berkeley’s Harry Huskey and Derrick Lehmer who had been involved with the first electronic computer ENIAC as in Part 5 (i) – were not so positive.

In his 1979 interview Fein recalled Forsythe’s ‘hedging the bet’ attitude regarding establishing a computer science department at Stanford, and the negative attitudes of John Herriott, later Forsythe’s co-founder of the computer science division in the mathematics department, and of math department chairman David Gilbarg:

“FEIN: …

… Herriot, you know Herriot, I used to talk locally in Palo Alto, a lot at Stanford on this idea, and he was – hostile was an understatement – to the idea. I mean he would get up and shout, “What you want it pie in the sky and you can’t have pie in the sky!” And that was the reception I got. George Forsythe… I met him at a Los Angeles Conference before I came to Stanford – and he asked me about Stanford because he was considering either Berkeley or Stanford and I told him I thought Stanford was the place to go. He was interested in numerical analysis, and he had also worked on SWAC over there, and I told him I was working for Stanford and trying to persuade them about a computer science department. a I was already in the middle of the study and I had the outline of what I was going to recommend and he finally came to Stanford. After he came to Stanford his position was – well equivocal; he could go for it or not go for it. There was a very, very strong opposition in the mathematics department and George was in the mathematics department and Dave Gilbarg who was the chairman of the department, who was a very close friend of mine, because his boy and my boy were on the same little league team, and you know we used to go to the movie together with the families. But Dave thought computing was like plumbing. We don’t have plumbers studying within the university and what does computing have to do with intellect? I am exaggerating of course. He was murder on it and he may still be to this day. And George wasn’t sure he wanted a separate department either. Herriot though the pie in the sky, crazy. So the opposition came from insiders not outsiders…”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

About the Berkeley personalities, Fein recalled the reaction of Harry Huskey – as in Part 5 (i) the leader of the SWAC computer development at the INA at UCLA, and then a Berkeley math and electrical engineering professor – against having a computer science department:

“FEIN: … Well, this report came out and as I recall, one of the anecdotes, I gave a copy to West Churchman who apparently was very interested in it – West is a philosopher and all of that, and he thought it was a great thing. He organized a small seminary to be held at Berkeley (and I don’t recall exactly when that was and I regret so many times not having kept a date book on these things) and as I recall around the table, Harry Huskey, my good Derek Lehmer, Julie (Julian) Feldman, pretty sure Ed Feigenbaum…at least those and I may think of some others before we finish the interview. West introduced me, saying I had a notion that universities should be involved in computers and that there should be a separate computer science department. And I made my pitch. And Harry Huskey said he saw no need whatever for having a separate department. He was doing computing in engineering.”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

As Fein described, dismissiveness toward computer science came from the perspective of engineering as well.

And according to Fein, Derrick Lehmer – as in Part 5 (i) an early pioneer in mathematical computing and a former INA director who brought Huskey to Berkeley after INA’s closure in 1954 – called Fein and his idea “crazy”:

“FEIN: … And Derek Lehmer – he didn’t see any need for a department. He was, even at that time, trying to use the computer that Morton built (Morton was the computer man at Berkeley in those days and they were building a homemade computer). I think Lehmer was trying to use it for prime number calculations. And Derek Lehmer patted me on the head and…crazy idea…as a matter of fact, one of my sons later went to Berkeley, well two of them went to Berkeley, one of them, Danny who was with Mario Savio during those days and once he ran into Derek Lehmer and he said that Professor Lehmer said, “Oh, your father is Lou Fein, that crazy guy that wants…I thought he was joking, but…(laughter).”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

As detailed in Part 5 (i), Huskey and Lehmer were the leading computational mathematicians at UC Berkeley, both had worked with von Neumann in relation to ENIAC, and Huskey held negative opinions of von Neumann in the ENIAC project while Lehmer was of opposite mathematical interests to von Neumann’s.

There seemed to be a common thread in both the early electronic computer development where von Neumann was the leader of an ambitious computer-building movement, and the later emergence of the computer science discipline, that Huskey and Lehmer were solid technical experts but skeptics about ambitious development goals.

After submitting his report to Stanford Graduate Dean Al Bowker, recommending the establishment of a graduate school of computer science, Fein did not receive a formal response for 30 months while the university appointed Forsythe as the Computing Center director, and so had to write a letter to enquire:

“FEIN: …

So I envisioned a set of courses in a department itself, actually in a graduate school to start off with, because we really didn’t know much about computers for undergraduate study, so we had to start out with a graduate program, I thought. And I laid out a set of courses, not only a set of courses for the school itself, but for other departments, computers for – medicine, computer for so–, and a research program, and some dollars required and where it might come from, and I wanted to start it with some seed money that wasn’t merely a computer center as many people were doing. …

…

FEIN: And this report lays it out, and in my other papers which I suppose you should see because George took a lot of his stuff from these papers. I used to talk to George a lot about this. Anyway, the relationship between the computer center and the computer department was identified at least. … and Al…there was a difference in philosophy between Al and me. I laid out a structure, an organization and I thought that even if we didn’t have a bunch of computer geniuses around in which you can set up a school…you have a bunch of slots and then you get the best person you can to fill the slot…and Al didn’t believe this; he said “It doesn’t make any difference what the structure is, because what we need is to get a von Neumann out here and then things will go well.” The great man theory.

It’s clear that with that view he didn’t think I was that great man and he didn’t want in principle to set up an organization and then fill it with people who were available, great or not. Meanwhile, Burroughs, I believe, was dangling some equipment in front of his eyes for free because all of these manufacturers are very interested in getting universities to pick up their equipment for sales promotional purposes and Al, I think, got a very good deal from Burroughs. Burroughs gave him a machine and he, I think, started what was essentially a computer center and it isn’t clear to me when he decided that George should be the one to do that and that maybe alter, I don’t know exactly what Al was thinking because he stopped talking to me about it – that’s why I had to write the letter about it’s 30 months since…I guess Al appointed George to start with the computer center and maybe to give some courses in numerical analysis. …”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

So the pioneering computer science advocate Louis Fein, in his May 9, 1979 interview conducted by Pamela McCorduck, quoted above, made two rather serious allegations: one, when George Forsythe began to advocate for computer science in the early 1960s “a lot of his stuff” came from Fein’s earlier papers; and two, Stanford Graduate Dean Al Bowker held a biased view that a new discipline needed to be started by a “great man” like John von Neumann, which Fein wasn’t.

Apparently, Forsythe was more of such a “great man” – and then also suffered von Neumann’s fate.

In making his allegations, Fein also gave his explanation why his advocacy was ignored by the Stanford administration, namely that his ambition of becoming a computer science department founding chairman was viewed as a threat by academic insiders – possibly insinuating that Forsythe was such an insider:

“FEIN: Well, the usual political explanation – Lou Fein brings in an idea, “An outsider is bringing in an idea and it is clear that he is bringing it in because he wants to be the chairman of the department and I prefer that I be the chairman of the department and so I will resist it.” The resistance to innovation anyway, and secondly the threat.””

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

Fein’s interviewer Pamela McCorduck tried to place Fein’s historical dispute with Stanford in a neutral light:

“McCORDUCK: …

The first time I came across the mention of your name as I was going through the archives of George Forsythe’s papers in the Stanford archives, was in a letter that you wrote to Frederick Terman and in this letter you said that “it has been almost thirty months since we last discussed the formation of a graduate school of computer science at Stanford as recommended in my report commissioned by Dr. A. H. Bowker.” …

…

McCORDUCK: Now I inferred from the text of the letter you wrote that Terman at some point must have responded to you and said, “Look, dozens of faculty members come to me with hot propositions. Yours is no hotter than anybody else’s. It’s interesting but it’s not revolutionary so please leave me alone already.” And you were arguing in your letter that it wasn’t just another hot proposition but that it was in fact revolutionary which he didn’t seem to see or at least denied.”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

Frederick Terman mentioned above, to whom Fein sent a letter of grievance after waiting for nearly 30 months for a response to his report, as in Part 5 (i) had been the mentor of William Hewlett and David Packard in their founding of the Hewlett-Packard Company, an event since recognized as the birth of Silicon Valley.

The Provost of Stanford, his hometown, Terman proudly pitched for the region over the East Coast and Southern California:

““The price that is paid for all these blessings is annoying traffic congestion around 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. in the 10- to 20-minute drive between home and work. But this is really a pretty small price to pay to avoid having to live in the East, or even in Southern California where the traffic is worse and the smog is denser.”

Fred Terman had just retired as provost of Stanford University when he offered that 1965 assessment of what was to become Silicon Valley…

…

Born in English, Ind., in 1900, Frederick Emmons Terman seemed destined from the start for intellectual glory. His father, Lewis, who suffered from chronic battles with tuberculosis, moved his family to Stanford’s sunny environs when Fred was a youngster. There, Lewis, a noted scholar and educator, invented the Stanford-Binet IQ test. He also prepared a course of home tutelage that enabled young Fred to complete grade school in just four years.”

(“THE ENGINEER WHO JUMP-STARTED SILICON VALLEY”, by Joan O’C. Hamilton, August 7, 1997, Business Week)

An MIT engineering Ph.D. graduate in the 1920s under Vannevar Bush, who later during World War II was the U.S. government’s leading scientific adviser as discussed in Part 5 (i), Terman became an excellent teacher at Stanford, at Bush’s request managed a military research lab at Harvard during World War II and later received the Medal of Merit; subsequently as Stanford Dean of Engineering and then Provost, Terman was at home with Cold War-oriented research – as a young boy he had already tinkered with ham radio with his friend Herbert Hoover, Jr.:

“By the time he was 14, the younger Terman had developed an interest in ham radio (which he pursued with his friend, Herbert Hoover Jr.), and with it, a lifelong love of electronics. He earned two Stanford degrees, in chemistry and engineering, then a PhD from MIT, where his mentor was Vannevar Bush, who later became director of the government’s Office of Scientific Research & Development. In the 1920s, Terman returned to Stanford, where he developed a reputation as an excellent teacher… Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard would later write in his autobiography, “The HP Way,” that “Professor Terman had the unique ability to make a complex problem seem the essence of simplicity.”

…

… Other contemporaries say Stanford’s early lead on Silicon Valley vis-a-vis UC-Berkeley, was largely because Stanford had the aggressive and well-connected Terman, while Berkeley had a dean of engineering who was building a much broader base with young faculty.

JAMMIN’ THE RADAR. During the early years of World War II, Vannevar Bush recruited Terman to head the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory, back at Cambridge, Mass. Terman would later be awarded the highest civilian medal – the Medal of Merit – for his work there. Under his direction, the lab developed strategies and methods to confound enemy radar…

During this period Terman both added to his already far-flung network of powerful people in industry and government and lobbied for the government to devote much more funding for science and engineering in higher education as a key to military success. When he returned to Stanford in 1946 as dean of engineering, he embarked upon what he called his “steeples of excellence” strategy to gain world reknown for Stanford. …

This approach was instrumental in nursing back to financial health a Stanford that World War II had threatened. Not only did Stanford lose a lot of tuition-paying students to the war, it got virtually no research money from the federal government, which did, in fact, pour money into Harvard, Yale, and other Eastern schools. As dean, Terman was happy and anxious to take on government contracts that would later fuel the cold war arms race. …”

(Joan O’C. Hamilton, August 7, 1997, Business Week)

The U.S. Presidential Medal for Merit was awarded to “such civilians of the nations prosecuting the war under the joint declaration of the United Nations and of other friendly foreign nations as have distinguished themselves by exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services since the proclamation of an emergency by the President on September 8, 1939.”

(“Federal Register: Executive Order 9637–Medal for Merit”, U.S. National Archives)

But Terman’s achievements and pedigree could not have intimidated Fein, who had not only gone through the Southern California military aerospace industry but had worked as a military technology engineer during World War II, including in a Harvard lab – just a different lab from the one Terman led:

“Louis Fein graduated from Long Island University in 1938, with a bachelor’s degree in physics. Upon graduating, Fein entered the University of Colorado at Boulder to work on his master’s degree in physics. He graduated from Colorado in 1941 and went to work as as an instructor in mathematics at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. By 1943, Fein had left Earlham and went to work for the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory as an engineer on sonar devices, underwater sound gear, acoustic gear, and ultrasonic gear. While working at the Lab, Fein took courses at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in electronics and mathematics. When the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory closed, Fein went to work for Submarine Signal Company, The Submarine Signal Company permitted Fein to enroll at Brown University to work on his doctorate in 1945. … In 1948, Fein applied to the Raytheon Manufacturing Company, who had a contract to make two computers under the HURRICANE project for Point Magu in California. …”

(“Interviewee: Louis Fein Interviewer: Henry S. Tropp”, May 4, 1973, Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977, Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

I note an interesting contrast between the two at Harvard during the war, that Terman directed research on radar in the air while Fein did engineering work on sonar underwater.

I also note that Fein received his Ph.D. from Brown, the same university Forsythe had received his.

With his own solid educational and engineering work backgrounds, some of which previously near Terman at Harvard, it was only logical for Fein to appeal to Stanford Provost Terman after 30 months not getting a reply from Graduate Dean Bowker about his consultation report on computer science.

Terman’s feedback, a suggestion of getting “a little contract” from the Office of Navy Research like how Bowker had started Stanford’s statistics department, disappointed Fein:

“FEIN: …

…I had a talk with Terman, because after I presented this report, I talked a lot with Al (Bowker) and then Terman. Al had started the statistics department at Stanford and statistics had the same kind of history of resistance by academics and mathematics departments for introducing a pedestrian study like statistics, which is like plumbing, into the university. The way in which apparently Al got it going was to get a contract from ONS for one person, get a little project going and then hustle another contract from maybe the Air Force and get something going. And after 8 or 9 or 10 years he had gotten something. And I couldn’t see with the vision I had, doing computer science by getting a little dinky computer from IBM…

…

FEIN: … Also Terman, you know Al’s notion was the great man theory, and Terman was telling me, “Well, Lou,” he says, “We can’t just set you up like you want, but why don’t you do like what Al did with statistics: get yourself a little contract from ONR and hire yourself one person and so on and after a while do like he did.” And I couldn’t see that at all, and with hindsight I am still right.”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In fact, “a little contract from ONR”, i.e., the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research reviewed in Part 5 (i), was not only how Bowker had started the Stanford statistics department but how Bowker himself had been hired by Stanford; Terman had gone to Mina Rees, head of ONR’s mathematics division – previously mentioned in Part 5 (i) – to try to win an ONR statistical sampling contract, and Rees suggested for that purpose hiring Bowker, a Columbia University graduate student who had worked with her in probability studies of strategic bombing during World War II:

“… On one of Terman’s visits to the East Coast, he had talked with Mina Rees, the head of the ONR’s mathematics division, and learned that the ONR was planning to let a contract for statistical sampling work. To Terman this was a clear indication that mathematical statistics was an “important” field, and he was eager for Stanford to obtain the contract … Stanford, however, did not have any mathematical statisticians on its faculty and no money to hire any. But, as Terman was quick to realize, if Stanford could obtain the ONR contract, it could use the contract funds to cover a portion of the salaries of any statisticians the university might hire; the university’s portion of the salaries would be paid with overhead funds accumulated from government contracts. … The university might even make money, Terman speculated. …

Terman’s plan to hire “top notch” statisticians using contract funds from the ONR clearly required the cooperation of the ONR. Terman went directly to Rees with his plan and asked her for the names of the best available statisticians in the country. She suggested Albert Bowker, a graduate student at Columbia University who, during the war, had done probability studies of strategic bombing as a member, along with Rees, of the OSRD’s applied mathematics division at Columbia. Bowker was hired by Stanford; shortly afterwards, the university received from the ONR the statistical sampling contract.”

(Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford, 1997, University of California Press)

So Graduate Dean Bowker had originally been recruited to Stanford by Terman at the recommendation of the ONR to start Stanford’s statistics research, and so was doubtlessly trusted by Provost Terman.

In an interview by McCorduck on May 21, 1979, only 12 days after the Fein interview, Bowker asserted that Terman had “tended to follow” his advice on computing matters:

“McCORDUCK: Do you happen to remember why Louis Fein came to mind when you decided to commission this report?

BOWKER: Well, he had some interest in this field and was around Stanford. I’ve forgotten exactly now why I talked to him. I talked to a number of other people and many of them were quite negative.

McCORDUCK: But still you persisted. What was Terman’s role in this?

BOWKER: Well, he tended to follow my advice in these areas and I’m sure he was…He and I had worked from the very beginning to develop new machine capabilities at Stanford rather than a joint activity at my laboratory and at his when he was Dean of Engineering. We had worked together for a long time on computing matters.”

(“An Interview with ALBERT BOWKER”, interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 21, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

Hence, I can infer that when Terman told Fein to start with “a little contract from ONR” like Bowker had done starting the statistics department, it was also Bowker’s view that the computer science department should also start this way.

My view of it, on the basis of my review of history in Part 5 (i), is that funding through a contract with a military or military-oriented research agency was a foundational cornerstone of U.S. government support for scientific research, first put in place under the leadership of Vannevar Bush, Frederick Terman’s mentor – Louis Fein must have known it well as he had been a chief computer engineer at the military aerospace company Raytheon, a company co-founded by Bush.

(“Raytheon Company: History”, Raytheon Company)

In fact, where Bowker as a student had worked with Rees during World War II, “the OSRD’s applied mathematics division at Columbia” as in the second previous quote, was the U.S. government’s Office of Scientific Research and Development under Bush, which as in Part 5 (i) managed science funding contracts during the war.

Louis Fein might not like the “little contract” much, but George Forsythe proceeded to found and build up a Stanford computer science department beyond such limits, a department with unmatched national influence and an unparalleled number of National Science Foundation Fellows – thus Graduate Dean Al Bowker was right about the “great man”.

I note that Bowker’s background did not seem to include real military technology research like what Terman and Fein did at Harvard radar and sonar labs during wartime, but only the probability studies with Rees at Columbia; at Stanford the “little contracts” he got from defense research agencies to start and build up the statistics department – as Fein described – were thus presumably partly a favor from Rees at ONR.

Rather, Al Bowker was a lifelong academic from a U.S. Capital childhood with his father a member of the Bureau of Standards, as detailed in Part 5 (i) the government agency whose management of the INA at UCLA was cut short during the McCarthy era, before George Forsythe’s move to Stanford; following the dispute with Fein, Bowker left Stanford in 1963 to become Chancellor of the City University of New York, and beginning in 1971 Chancellor of UC Berkeley, before joining U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1980 – prior to my 1982 arrival at Berkeley under the helm of his successor Ira Michael Heyman:

“Albert Hosmer Bowker, a former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, an expert in statistics and an innovative administrator during his decades-long career in higher education across the country, died Sunday in a retirement home in Portola Valley, Calif. He was 88 and had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.

…

Bowker was chancellor of UC Berkeley, which he called a “wild and wonderful place,” from 1971 to 1980…

…

Ira Michael Heyman, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus who served as vice chancellor under Bowker and as chancellor from 1980 to 1990, said that during Bowker’s term as chancellor dwindling state funding made it difficult to maintain existing programs and almost impossible to launch anything new. He applauded Bowker’s role in setting up the UC Berkeley Foundation.

…

Born in Winchendon, Mass., in 1919, Bowker grew up in Washington, D.C., where his father worked for the federal Bureau of Standards.

He earned his B.S. in mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1941 and a Ph.D. in statistics at Columbia University in 1949. …

He began his professional career in 1941 as a research assistant in MIT’s Department of Mathematics, and took a post as an associate mathematical statistician at Columbia University from 1943 to 1945.

Bowker became an assistant professor of math and statistics at Stanford University in 1947, and was chair of its statistics department from 1948 to 1959. He is credited with setting up a mathematical statistics research lab and a computer center at Stanford, where he served as the graduate division dean from 1959 to 1963.

Bowker was chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY) from 1963 to 1971, where he supported a plan to provide free tuition for full-time CUNY undergraduates. …

…

Bowker’s role in higher education continued after he left UC Berkeley in 1980. During the Carter administration, he accepted a position as assistant secretary for postsecondary education for the newly-formed U.S. Department of Education. He served there from 1980 to 1981, then took a post as dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland from 1981 to 1984.

…

He was executive vice president of the University of Maryland from 1984 to 1986. He returned to CUNY as vice president for planning at its research foundation from 1986-1993.“

(“Albert Bowker, innovative UC Berkeley chancellor during 1970s, dies at age 88”, by Kathleen Maclay, January 22, 2008, UC Berkeley News)

Reading the UC Berkeley obituary above, I notice that Fein’s allegation of Bowker getting a “little contract” here and there for “8 or 9 or 10 years” was inaccurate: Bowker had in fact founded the statistics department in 1948 immediately after his 1947 arrival at Stanford – he had not even earned his Ph.D. when he became founding chairman of Stanford’s statistics department, but apparently Mina Rees’s recommendation meant everything to a Stanford eager to get the ONR statistical sampling contract.

But I can understand that, given the “little contract” mode of that era, it likely took many more years for Bowker to get sufficient funding to build up a strong department.

Even though Fein did not make it explicit, I can detect that in his lament of Bowker’s “little contract” he was also somewhat belittling of Bowker’s academic credential at the time of founding the Stanford statistics department, compared to Fein’s own long lists of accomplishments when starting to advocate for computer science.

I notice that Bowker’s top-level academic leadership positions have been at left-leaning public universities, CUNY and UC Berkeley, and after Stanford all his positions have been at public institutions.

After arriving at Berkeley, Bowker became a lifelong member of a close-knit academic community there:

““Al Bowker was an outstanding chancellor who paved the way for UC Berkeley into the modern era,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. “For 28 years after stepping down as chancellor, Al Bowker remained an integral part of the Cal community, offering advice for the chancellors who came after him. I was always delighted to see him at the Faculty Club, entertaining colleagues and participating in campus life. He will be greatly missed.”

…

Bowker maintained a home in Berkeley at University Terrace, a condominium community for university faculty and staff, having moved to a residence in Portola Valley several years ago to be close to his grandchildren.”

(Kathleen Maclay, January 22, 2008, UC Berkeley News)

So it is possible that Bowker’s purer academic perspective entitled him a high sense of intellectual self-esteem that helped keep at bay the enthusiasm of Louis Fein, a person of strong but mostly military-oriented engineering credentials, to wade into the academia for some founding status in a new discipline.

Consistent with this as the explanation why Al Bowker did not act on Louis Fein’s consultation report on computer science but helped George Forsythe take the initiative, is a crucial fact reviewed in Part 5 (i): Mina Rees, Bowker’s wartime mentor at Columbia and then head of ONR’s mathematics division, in the 1950s expressed strong opposition to the U.S. Army’s direct role in academic mathematical research, i.e., opposing the establishment of the Army Mathematics Research Center at Wisconsin-Madison.

Further convergence of Bowker and Rees later actually happened: in 1963 when Bowker became Chancellor of CUNY, Rees was already CUNY Dean of Graduate Studies. Rees spent her entire academic career, before and after serving in government and military research agencies, in the CUNY public education system: at New York City’s Hunter College, CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center.

(“FORMER PRESIDENTS: Mina S. Rees”, The Graduate Center, City University of New York; and, “Mina Rees: August 2, 1902 – October 25, 1997”, Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College)

But despite living to a good 88 years, Al Bowker still died of the same pancreatic cancer his former Stanford underling George Forsythe had died of at 55 – and in a different coincidence, Forsythe’s daughter Diana and Mina Rees died in the same year 1997, Diana in August at 49 before Mina in October at 95!

Mina lived to nearly twice the age of Diana, though not quite. On the other hand, the day in August when I had arrived at the San Francisco International Airport and Berkeley from China 15 years earlier, the 28th, happened to be twice of the August day, the 14th, when Diana Forsythe died in Alaska.

(“Team Canada female athletes disqualified from Commonwealth silver medal, jailed Chinese democracy activist awarded with Nobel peace prize, and others in between (Part 3) – when violence and motive are subtle and pervasive”, March 29, 2011, Feng Gao’s Blog – Reflections on Events of Interest)

And despite George Forsythe’s talents and ambitious drive, Stanford wasn’t the first university to start a computer science department.

The honor of the first belongs to Purdue University, which established its computer science department in 1962.

In his May 1979 interview Fein also recalled his interactions with Purdue, claiming it as an example that his idea of a new department was viewed as a threat by an existing department:

“McCORDUCK: Do you think people thought of this as a threat? In what way?

FEIN: Yes, it’s threatening in the sense that they themselves typically weren’t in the field and monies that might normally come to them might be diverted to this new department. I had this experience at Purdue. I was invited to Purdue by Tom Jones who is now a Vice President of MIT. He got hold of one of my papers and he thought it was the greatest thing since the wheel. He invited me to Purdue where he was Chairman of the Department. And his people almost murdered me – they didn’t want anything to do with this. Oh, after I left, two years later, they had one…And that’s my explanation. I think anyone who brings in a new idea anywhere that requires money from a common budget poses a financial threat and obviously a professional one.”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 9, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In his subsequent interview by McCorduck, Bowker did confirm that Stanford mathematicians were resistant to the discipline of computer science and even to that of applied mathematics:

“McCORDUCK: … Apparently one of the things you said to George Forsythe (I got all my information, by the way, from the Stanford archives. George kept superb notes to himself and things like that; notes exist and I must say if you ever go read these, you’d be flattered out of your mind by some of these things. They are very, very complimentary to you.) One of the things you said in your farewell conversation with him, apparently you telephoned to say goodby to him when you were leaving. …

…

McCORDUCK: … When you called him to say goodby, you said to him, you recommended to him, that the Computer Science Division not stay in Math, in fact do its best to get out of Math, because you detected some resistance on the part of mathematicians, resistance to hiring non-mathematical but nevertheless legitimate computer science types.

BOWKER: Yes, well, I think it’s true around the country where very few departments of mathematics have taken the lead in this field. There is some activity in ours and other areas but generally mathematics departments tend to emphasize the pure mathematics. The Stanford department had more emphasis on classical analysis than on applicable mathematics if you like, than most in this country, but still was not terribly interested in becoming primarily an applied mathematics department and still isn’t.”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 21, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

But Bowker politely reminded McCorduck that the Stanford administration, Terman in this case – and presumably Bowker himself since the two had been together on computing matters as mentioned earlier – had controlled the pace of change:

“McCORDUCK: … What I’m curious to know is how you managed to convince a lot of people who were resistant to this that it wasn’t just another “hot project.”

BOWKER: Well, I think Stanford was trying to create activities growing out of research largely, but activities that in some sense fell in between basic science and engineering. …

I don’t remember exactly when Dr. Terman changed his mind. In fact, my recollection is that the department may not have come into being until after I left or at the time I left.”

(interview by Pamela McCorduck, May 21, 1979, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In my view, Louis Fein’s grievance about Stanford, and about existing academic departments in general, consisted of two different matters: one, a university’s attitude toward establishing a computer science department; and two, how the university treated Fein’s active lobbying.

Reviewing the Purdue facts carefully, I come to a conclusion that, rather than Fein’s outsider role having been treated as a threat, his lack of university faculty experience hindered his ambition – a conclusion consistent with my earlier remark on why Stanford Graduate Dean Bowker resisted Fein’s effort to get some computer science founding status, namely that Fein’s primary background had been in the military technology industry and not the academia.

In 1961, Fein was briefly considered a possible candidate for the directorship of Purdue’s Computer Sciences Center:

“The Statistical and Computing Laboratory was moved into the Schools of Engineering along with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Hawkins separated the Computing Laboratory from the Statistical Laboratory and it was renamed the Computer Sciences Center in 1961. … Efforts were made to find a senior person in the computer field to be director of the Computer Sciences Center, and correspondence between Pyle and T.F. Jones mentions Louis Fein and Bernard Galler as possibilities, but the search was not pressed very vigorously until Felix Haas took charge early in 1962 …”

(“The Origins of Computing and Computer Science at Purdue University”, by Saul Rosen and John R. Rice, August 1990, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University)

But Fein’s prospect was short-lived. Unlike Stanford taking a step-by-step approach, Purdue quickly decided to establish a computer science department in 1962 and let the founding department chairman also assume the center directorship:

“During the spring and summer of 1961 there was an active search for a permanent head of the Division of Mathematical Sciences. There were negotiations with Dr. F. Joachim Weyl who was director of the Naval Analysis Group in the Office of Naval Research. Weyl withdrew his name from consideration and the position was offered to Felix Haas who was head of the Mathematics Department at Wayne State University. Haas accepted the position during the summer, with the understanding that he would start at Purdue in January, 1962.

…

… By the beginning of 1962 many universities, including most Big Ten universities, had requested, and some had already received, grants from the National Science Foundation under a program initiated in 1956 in support of institutional computer facilities at universities. … The most important effort of the Computer Sciences Center under Haas and Pyle in the spring of 1962 was to produce an NSF proposal that requested $920,000 to help finance the acquisition of the IBM 7044 and to support related programs in computer service, research and instruction.

…

… Haas recalls a meeting with Hawkins and Hovde, probably before he officially started at Purdue. in which they agreed that the Division of Mathematical Sciences would be organized internally into three academic departments, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, plus a Computer Sciences Center that would provide computing services for the whole university. It was considered only natural then that the head of the Department of Computer Sciences would also be the director of the Computer Sciences Center.”

(Saul Rosen and John R. Rice, August 1990, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University)

As in the above, the National Science Foundation had initiated a program in 1956 to support universities to establish computer facilities, and it helped make university computer science viable.

The year 1956 saw a considerable number of interesting events in the computing field, as in Part 5 (i): John von Neumann was in hospital treatment for cancer and made the decision to move from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to the University of California, a move that did not happen as he soon died in early 1957; the Army math research center at Wisconsin-Madison was founded; the long reign of Thomas J. Watson, Sr. at IBM ended and the rule was passed to his son, Watson, Jr.; and IBM established its San Jose research laboratory in the future Silicon Valley in California.

In 1956 John von Neumann also played a key leading role in the NSF initiative to fund academic computing facilities:

“… during the early 1950s, NSF support for computer science was modest and was channelled through its mathematics research program. This picture changed as a result of the 1956 endorsement by the Advisory Panel on University Computing Facilities (chaired by John von Neumann) of a specialized NSF program for the support of computer science, the 1957 launch of Sputnik, and the passage of the National Defense Education Act in 1958. NSF support for computer science research grew rapidly after 1958, and was especially important in meeting the critical need of academic researchers for computer equipment. Between 1957 and 1972, the National Science Foundation expended $85 million to support the purchase by more than 200 universities of computer hardware.”

(“The Federal Government Role in the Development of the American Software Industry: An Assessment”, by Richard N. Langlois and David C. Mowery, in David C. Mowery, ed., The International Computer Software Industry: A Comparative Study of Industrial Evolution and Structure, 1996, Oxford University Press)

In the academic computing field that I was in during the 1980s and 1990s, Purdue University was known as a practically inclined Midwest school, different from the intellectually inclined West-Coast UC Berkeley and Stanford.

The last quote from the article by Saul Rosen and John R. Rice shows that practical speediness: in 1961 a new head of Purdue’s division of mathematical sciences, Felix Haas, was hired to start in 1962; prior to arrival, Haas already reached an agreement with Purdue to start a new computer science department alongside the existing mathematics and statistics departments in the division; upon arrival, Haas immediately applied for NSF funding to purchase a new IBM computer and to support “computer service, research and instruction” while the preparation for a new computer science department was underway.

Like Louis Fein, Purdue computer science department’s founding chairman Sam Conte had a background working in military-oriented technology companies; but unlike Fein, Conte had been a university professor:

“Having decided that there was going to be a Computer Sciences Department. Haas moved rapidly to recruit a department head. Bill Miller, who was then head of the Division of Applied Mathematics at Argonne, was approached. but when he removed himself from consideration the position was offered to Sam Conte. Conte had been an Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department at Wayne State University up to 1956, before Felix Haas came to Wayne State. Since 1956 Conte had worked for five years at Space Technology Laboratories and then at Aerospace Corporation in California. where he was Manager of the Department of Programming and Analysis in the Computing Laboratory. At a meeting of the University Executive Council on March 12, 1962 Felix Haas announced that “Samuel Come, a distinguished scientist currently with Aerospace Corporation, will join the Purdue staff on July 1 to become Director of the Computer Sciences Center.” …

On October 24, 1962 President Hovde asked for and received approval from the Board of Trustees to change “. . . the internal administrative organization of the Division of Mathematical Sciences . . . effective October 1, 1962.” The Department of Computer Sciences and the Computer Sciences Center were listed as components of the division, along with Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, and a Statistical Laboratory. Professor S. D. Conte was listed as chairman of the Department of Computer Sciences and as Director of the Computer Sciences Center. …

…

After Sam Conte, the first faculty member hired for the new Computer Sciences Department was Saul Rosen. Conte had known Rosen at Wayne State University before they both left that university in 1956. Rosen then worked in the software area for Burroughs and Philco corporation and then as an independent consultant. He inquired of Conte about possible consulting work on the west coast and Conte suggested that he join the new Computer Sciences Department which he was forming at Purdue. …”

(Saul Rosen and John R. Rice, August 1990, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University)

As cited above, Conte had been an associate professor at Wayne State University before joining the aerospace industry.

Saul Rosen, the first Purdue computer science department faculty member cited above alongside Conte, had also been a Wayne State associate professor before joining the industry; Rosen had also earned his math Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where ENIAC had been born.

(“Saul Rosen: 1922–1991”, RCAC, Purdue University)

Interestingly, the year when both Conte and Rosen left Wayne State for the industry was 1956 – just like a number of significant events in the computing field listed earlier.

In contrast, in his early career Louis Fein had only been a college math instructor with a master’s degree, as quoted earlier. Later he taught some computer courses here and there, including at Wayne State and Stanford:

“… Fein taught from 1952 to 1953 at Wayne State University a course on digital computer systems and then later in 1956, at Stanford University. …”

(May 4, 1973, Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977, Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

So, in my opinion Fein’s not getting what he wanted at Stanford or Purdue was due to his lack of established academic credentials: universities, either the elite Stanford or the practical Purdue, would choose established faculty members to lead their new departments, not someone with only temporary teaching experience, even if in Fein’s case he had strong records working in the industry and campaigning for such new departments – the rare case of Al Bowker’s hiring at Stanford and founding a new department before receiving the Ph.D. was not an instance of exception, in my view, but one of expediency of the inside track in the academia.

But as the last quote from the Purdue history article by Saul Rosen and John R. Rice indicates, within Purdue in the hiring of Conte and Rosen their industry pedigrees were emphasized, with Conte referred to as “a distinguished scientist currently with Aerospace Corporation”. The two’s most recent jobs had been at military-oriented technology companies: Space Technology Laboratories and Aerospace Corporation for Conte, and Philco Corporation for Rosen.

Space Technology Laboratories was the leading contractor for intercontinental ballistic missiles development, something John von Neumann had played a key role for as the U.S. Air Force’s principal scientific adviser as in Part 5 (i); Aerospace Corporation conducted research and development for the Air Force’s space and missile program; and Philco Corporation produced transistors and built computers for the U.S. Navy and the National Security Agency, and also for the commercial market.

(“Former TRW Space Park, now Northrop Grumman, designated as historic site for electronics and aerospace work”, by John Keller, December 18, 2011, Military & Aerospace Electronics; “ABOUT US: PROVIDING TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE FOR MORE THAN 55 YEARS”, Aerospace Corporation; and, “First-Hand: The Navy Codebreakers and Their Digital Computers – Chapter 2 of the Story of the Naval Tactical Data System”, by David L. Boslaugh, Engineering and Technology History Wiki)

Nonetheless, in that Purdue history I do notice another sign of a close-knit academia, i.e., besides my earlier comment on Al Bowker’s style as a lifelong academic: both of Purdue computer science department’s founding members had been faculty members at Wayne State University from which Purdue had just hired Felix Haas to lead the Division of Mathematical Sciences, overseeing the math and stats departments and establishing the new computer science department – apparently Haas then brought in former Wayne State associates to fill the founding roles, in another example of expediency of the inside track in the academia.

In October 1962, the Purdue board of trustees proudly noted the university founded the first academic computer science department in the U.S.:

“… The October 24 entry on the minutes of the board of trustees makes it very clear that a Department of Computer Sciences was officially established in the fall of 1962, and provides a firm basis for the claim that the first Computer Science Department at an American university was established at Purdue.”

(Saul Rosen and John R. Rice, August 1990, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University)

The mathematician and computer scientist Carl de Boor, a leader of the very successful spline functions research at the Army Math Research Center at Wisconsin-Madison and the Ph.D. study choice recommended for me by my undergraduate adviser in 1981-1982 as discussed in Part 4 and Part 5 (i), receiving his University of Michigan Ph.D. in 1966 first became a Purdue computer science faculty member:

“The first task of Samuel Conte as new department head was to hire some faculty and define a graduate program. … In the very first year, there were seven teaching faculty, including Conte, a numerical analyst. … Four were already at Purdue. Two new faculty were hired, Robert Korphage in theory and Saul Rosen in programming systems. …

In 1963 there were three new faculty members: Richard Buchi in theory, Walter Gautschi in numerical analysis, and John Steele in programming systems. … The following year John Rice was hired in numerical analysis, and this completed the initial phase of hiring.

No new faculty was hired in 1965, and only one, Carl de Boor in numerical analysis, was hired in 1966. De Boor was the first of a number of young Ph.D.s hired who became influential members of the department. …”

(“History of the Computer Sciences Department at Purdue University”, by John R. Rice and Saul Rosen, in John R. Rice and Richard A. DeMillo, eds., Studies in Computer Science: In Honor of Samuel D. Conte, Springer Science+Business Media, 1994)

De Boor later moved to the Army Math Research Center in 1972 – the year George Forsythe died and Marina von Neumann Whitman was appointed to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, as mentioned earlier.

(“CURRICULUM VITÆ: CARL(-WILHELM REINHOLD) de BOOR”, Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

So the elite Stanford was behind the practical Purdue.

And despite George Forsythe’s historical reputation as the most influential advocate for establishing computer science as a discipline, Stanford wasn’t even the second university to found a CS department.

The runner-up claim belongs to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which established its computer science department in 1964 – the year before Stanford in 1965.

UNC had made a very forward-looking move early, in February 1959, hiring John W. Carr, III as its Computation Center director.

Like Louis Fein, Carr had a pioneering background in computer development, but it was in academic settings at MIT and the University of Michigan after World War II service as a Navy electronics officer:

“A pioneer in the computer world, Mr. Carr received a doctorate in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began work there in 1949 with the university’s groundbreaking electronic computer, “Project Whirlwind.”

Then, after a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1950, he joined the staff at the University of Michigan, where he taught the first courses on computer applications and from 1952 to 1955 headed the construction and design of a digital computer.

…

While serving in the Navy during World War II, he studied radar design and became a lieutenant and the electronics officer aboard the Boxer, an Essex-class aircraft carrier.”

(“John Carr, Emeritus Professor At Penn”, by Bill Price, April 12, 1997, philly.com)

At Michigan, Carr not only became an associate professor of mathematics – like Sam Conte and Saul Rosen at Wayne State – but also a leader of the broader computing community as the president of the Association for Computing Machinery, before moving to UNC Chapel Hill; at UNC, the computation center he directed obtained a new computer, with support from the maker Sperry-Rand Corporation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the National Science Foundation:

“In May, 1959, the Consolidated University of North Carolina will install a new Univac Scientific ERA-1105 Digital Computer in the new Physics and Mathematics Building now being built at Chapel Hill. Purchase of this machine was made possible through the support and cooperation of the Sperry-Rand Corporation, the Bureau of the Census, and the National Science Foundation.

… Beginning in February of this year Dr. John W. Carr, III, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan and former President of the Association for Computing Machinery assumed the post of Director of the Computation Center and Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University in Chapel Hill.”

(“INAUGURATION OF THE RESEARCH COMPUTATION CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA”, 1959, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

John Carr’s academic credentials, in both teaching and computer development, were significant when he became the 6th president of the ACM with a 2-year term starting in 1956. It added one more milestone to the year 1956 when other significant events happened in the computing field as mentioned earlier, including an NSF initiative led by von Neumann’s efforts to start a special program to support university computing facilities: in Carr’s case, he became the first current university academic to serve as the ACM president.

ACM’s founding president was John H. Curtiss, the head of the Applied Mathematics Division at the National Bureau of Standards, as in Part 5 (i) with a leadership role at the INA at UCLA; ACM’s 2nd president was John W. Mauchly, as in Part 5 (i) one of the lead inventors of ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, who by the time of his ACM presidency had co-founded his own computer company with ENIAC co-inventor John P. Eckert; ACM’s 3rd president was Franz Alt, who as in a quote in Part 5 (i) had been on the same Computations Committee with Derrick Lehmer overseeing ENIAC at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and who then became deputy chief of the Computation Laboratory of the NBS; ACM’s 4th president was Samuel B. Williams, a retired Bell Laboratories computer pioneer, and an NBS consultant at the time of his ACM presidency; and ACM’s 5th president was Alston S. Householder, then director of the Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

(“Margaret R. Fox Papers, 1935-1976. Finding Aid”, by Pat Hennessy, Kevin D. Corbitt and and John L. Jackson, August 1993, Charles Babbage Institute, Center for the History of Information Technology, University of Minnesota; “Alston Scott Householer”, by G.W. Stewart, October 1993, Volume 26, SIAM News; J. A. N. Lee, eds., International Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; “Dr. Franz Alt”, by Atsushi Akera, January/February 2006, ACM Oral History interviews; “John W. Mauchly”, Encyclopædia Britannica; and, “ACM Past Presidents”, Association for Computing Machinery)

From my standpoint, John Carr’s becoming the first current university academic to serve as the ACM president signalled that by 1956 the wider computing community had come to view the academia as ready to play a significant role in the computing field.

Additionally of interest to me is the fact that this ACM president happened to be also a professor at a university math department when Stephen Smale, later my Berkeley Ph.D. adviser, earned his Ph.D. – in 1957 – while being a leading activist in left-wing and anti-war politics as detailed in Part 2.

(“Biography: Steve Smale”, Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley)

However, subsequently in 1964 when the UNC Chapel Hill computer science department was founded, John Carr not only was not the founding chairman but was not even around at UNC. He had left in 1962 for the University of Pennsylvania:

“Mr. Carr joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1962 as professor of electrical engineering and later taught computer science. From 1965 to 1971, he served as graduate group chairman in computer science and taught there until retiring in 1993.”

(Bill Price, April 12, 1997, philly.com)

That was electronic engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, i.e., the Moore School where the first electronic computer ENIAC had been born, where in 1965 Carr became the graduate group chairman in computer science – distinguished indeed even if it wasn’t a computer science department.

And to Carr’s credit, in that same year 1965 Moore school Ph.D. student Richard L.Wexelblat became the world’s “first person to receive a Doctorate in Computer Science from a recognized graduate program in Computer Science”.

(“History of CIS at Penn”, Department of Computer and Information Science, Penn Engineering)

Oh well, North Carolina’s loss was Pennsylvania’s gain.

Still, I wonder why Carr left, rather unexpectedly in the evolution of the history. Was it because UNC did not make it in time to be the first university to found a computer science department? That could be a reason because Penn he then moved to was the birthplace of the electronic computer – a consolation prize for him, that is.

Over the years at Penn, Carr reached out internationally and brought computer science knowledge to important places in the world, including China’s Jiao Tong University, and Egypt’s Air Force Academy as its computer science department head:

“Mr. Carr developed contacts with computer scientists around the world, lecturing in the former Soviet Union and in China, where he was appointed adjunct professor of computer science at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai.

In the early 1970s, he was a visiting professor at the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and at the University of Sydney, Australia.

In 1987, he headed the department of computer science at the Egyptian Air Force Academy near Cairo and oversaw the construction of a computer laboratory and curriculum development for cadets.”

(Bill Price, April 12, 1997, philly.com)

But unfortunately, John Weber Carr also became a victim of pancreatic cancer, in 1997:

“John Weber Carr 3d, 73, emeritus professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday at his home in Bryn Mawr.”

(Bill Price, April 12, 1997, philly.com)

Compared to the most influential computer science advocate, pancreatic cancer victim George Forsythe at 55, Carr lived a long life to 73; on the other hand, compared to the Stanford administrator who had facilitated Forsythe in taking the initial modest step of founding the computer science division within the math department, pancreatic cancer victim Al Bowker at 88, who like Carr had moved on to another institution before a historic computer science department was founded, Carr’s life was short.

I note that Carr died in the same year as Diana Forsythe and Mina Rees, i.e., George Forsythe’s daughter and Al Bowker’s mentor, respectively.

And Chapel Hill’s loss could also be a blessing in disguise.

In 1964 establishing the second computer science department among U.S. universities, UNC Chapel Hill recruited Alfred Brooks to be the founding chairman; a distinguished computer scientist who decades later in 1999 received the ACM’s A. M. Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science as mentioned in Part 3, Brooks has enjoyed a long life – now in retirement after 51 years at Chapel Hill – and a long memory of life even before John Carr’s days:

“Fred Brooks retired in 2015 after 51 years at UNC — but he started teaching long before he got here.

“I started regular teaching when I was in high school,” he said. “My senior year, one of the teachers came down with cancer mid-year and I got sworn in to teach geometry and trig because there wasn’t anyone else around to do it.”

Brooks started UNC’s computer science department and has worked with its faculty, staff and students since the 1960s. “Fred founded the department in the mid 1960s, and it is probably very difficult to believe this, but at the time, the notion of forming a free-standing computer science department at a liberal arts university was unheard of,” Kevin Jeffay, chairperson of the Department of Computer Science, said.

“So for that reason we are actually the second oldest computer science department in the country. So it was actually a bit of an experiment, and obviously one that worked very well.” Aside from founding the computer science department at UNC, Brooks also receieved the 1999 A. M. Turing Award, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of computer science. “It’s the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science, so he’s internationally recognized as one of the brilliant computer scientists of our time,” Jeffay said.

Despite his achievements, Jeffay said he is very humble.

“He’s very modest and generous, always giving the credit to his students and to his collaborators,” he said. “He’s a wonderful colleague.”

Gary Bishop, a professor in the department, said Brooks is more than just his accomplishments. “He’s a giant, but he’s also a nice guy,” Bishop said.”

(“Founding UNC’s computer science department was an experiment — but it paid off for Fred Brooks”, by Maggie Budd, March 7, 2016, Daily Tar Heel)

Chapel Hill lost a former ACM president but gained a future winner of the ACM’s Turing Award. Isn’t a scientist of the highest professional honor as worthy as a top leader of the professional association?

Take a look at Brooks’s prior achievements before Chapel Hill, listed in his Turing Award biography, and one is really surprised:

“Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. was born April 19, 1931, in Durham, North Carolina. … he earned his AB in physics at Duke University in 1953. Brooks then joined the pioneering degree program in computer science at Harvard University, where he earned his SM in 1955 and his PhD in 1956. At Harvard he was a student of Howard Aiken, who during World War II developed the Harvard Mark I, one of the largest electromechanical calculators ever built, and the first automatic digital calculator built in the United States.

After graduation Brooks was recruited by IBM, where for the first several years of his career he served in various positions in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown Heights, New York. During that time he helped design the IBM 7090 “Stretch” supercomputer… Stretch was IBM’s first transistorized computer, containing some 150,000 transistors. Although it was a commercial failure, it pioneered a number of advanced concepts quite important to contemporary computing… Brooks went on to participate in the design of the architecture of the IBM Harvest, a variant of the Stretch with special features for the National Security Agency. He later helped the government assess the computing capability of the Soviet Union.

Brooks was next assigned to help design the IBM 8000, a new transistorized mainframe computer intended to replace the IBM 700/7000 series. But by the early 1960s, the global market for computers was incredibly crowded, with numerous companies offering incompatible, proprietary systems. As customers replaced their older systems with faster ones, they realized that their investment in software was a growing problem, because they had to rewrite it for every new system. Bob Evans promoted IBM’s vision to develop a single product line of general purpose computers with a common instruction set that permitted customers to preserve their investment in software as the moved from slower machines to faster ones. Evans assigned Brooks to lead the team to design this product line, called the System/360, which was announced in 1964. Brooks coined the term “computer architecture” to mean the structure and behavior of computer processors and associated devices, as separate from the details of any particular hardware implementation.

The importance of the System /360 cannot be understated: it was a widely successful project that transformed the face of business computing and reshaped the landscape of the computer companies throughout the world. …

While the hardware architecture for the System/360 was well underway, it was clear that there was considerable risk in delivering the operating system for the new series of machines. Brooks was assigned to lead the software team in building what was perhaps the largest operating system project of its time. …

After the successful delivery of the System/360 and its operating system, Brooks was invited to the University of North Carolina, where he founded the University’s computer science department in 1964. …”

(“FREDERICK (“FRED”) BROOKS”, A. M. Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery)

As described above, Alfred Brooks was the team leader of IBM’s revolutionarily successful System/360 computer that changed the face of business computing, and in the same year 1964 this IBM product was announced he was invited to be the founding chairman of Chapel Hill’s computer science department – at the age of only 33.

Brooks’s moving on from IBM to a good role in academic computer science was consistent with the fact that in the late 1950s and early 1960s IBM had become the main backer and influencer of academic computing activities:

“… Indeed, a survey of US academic computing in late 1959 argued that “it is fair to say that, in many cases, to the extent that a university computing activity has a purpose at all, it has been made for them by IBM.””

(Matti Tedre, The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline, 2015, CRC Press)

I notice that Brooks received his Harvard Ph.D. in 1956, the year so many significant events occurred in the computing field.

However, I note that by his Turing Award biography Brooks had not been a university faculty member prior to the Chapel Hill founding chairman job, having worked exclusively at IBM – even if in the 2015 story of his retirement quoted earlier, Brooks emphasized that he had begun teaching as a high school senior substituting for a cancer-stricken math teacher.

In light of the above fact, I have to modify my earlier-stated conclusion regarding Louis Fein’s grievance of not having been given a founding position in computer science: Brooks’s case illustrated that someone without established academic credentials, i.e., not having been a university professor, could still be the founding chairman of the second, if not the first, computer science department in the U.S., provided the person had an exceptionally strong computer industry record – in this case with an IBM brand name.

In other words, Fein could wish he had been a chief engineer for a brand-name IBM computer, rather than a Raytheon computer few knew about.

Experience in a military-oriented technology company like Raytheon, or those Purdue’s Conte and Rosen had worked in, was a significant credential; but Brooks’s experience at IBM developing a computer for the National Security Agency seemed adequate substitute for such military-orientation prerequisite, if there was any – he was also a graduate of Duke University, where the U.S. Army Office of Ordinance Research was located as in Part 5 (i).

Still, Brooks’s IBM achievements may not have been the only reason that Chapel Hill invited him to found the second academic computer science department in the U.S.: as quoted from his Turing Award biography, Brooks had received his Harvard Ph.D. under Howard Aiken, who had during World War II led the development of the Harvard Mark I, “one of the largest electromechanical calculators ever built, and the first automatic digital calculator built in the United States”.

In the historical timeline, the Harvard Mark I had been built before ENIAC, and von Neumann had paid a visit to Aiken and Mark I before taking part in the ENIAC project, as previously quoted in Part 5 (i):

“In 1943, during World War II, von Neumann was invited to join the Manhattan project – the project to develop the atomic bomb – because of his work on fluid dynamics. He soon realized that the problems he was working on involved a lot of computational work which might take years to complete. He submitted a request for help, and in 1944 he was presented a list of people he could visit. He visited Howard Aiken and saw his Harvard Mark I (ASCC) calculator. …”

(“Doing Mathematics on the ENIAC. Von Neumann’s and Lehmer’s different visions”, by Liesbeth De Mol, in E. Wilhelmus, I. Witzke (eds.), Mathematical practice and development throughout History, 2008, Logos Verlag)

Thus Aiken had been a prominent computer pioneer ahead of von Neumann, the “father of computers”.

But Mark I was not an “electronic” computer, only “electromechanical”, and was not Harvard-built but IBM-built under Harvard professor Howard Aiken’s guidance:

“During Aiken’s initial years as a Harvard graduate student, he followed the usual program of studies. He then shifted his allegiance to the field of electronics, the physics of vacuum tubes, and the properties of circuits, working directly under Professor E. Leon Chaffee… He began teaching in his second year as a graduate student and, after receiving his PhD in 1938, was appointed a faculty instructor… Aiken never published any of the results of his thesis research; all of his published writings dealt with one or another aspect of computing and computers.

…

Aiken’s 1937 proposal for a calculating machine began with a series of paragraphs devoted to an account of the pioneers in machine calculation: Pascal, Moreland, Leibniz, and, above all, Babbage. …

…

… On May 10, 1939, about a year and a half after Aiken’s first approach to IBM, James Bryce wrote Aiken that all the papers had been signed and that he was now “engaged in getting an appropriation put through.” He would then “issue the shop orders” and “begin the actual work of designing and constructing the calculating machine.” …

In January 1943, the Harvard machine was completed in the North Street Laboratory at Endicott, N.Y., and ran a test problem. But only in December 1943 was the machine demonstrated to members of the Harvard faculty. …

…

On April 17, 1944, Harvard’s president, James Bryant Conant, reported to IBM’s president, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., that “the calculating machine” had been “put into operative condition.” …

…

The IBM ASCC (the Harvard Mark I) was the first of a series of four computers associated with Howard Aiken. Mark I and Mark II were electromagnetic, using relays, but Mark III and Mark IV had a variety of electronic components, including vacuum tubes and solid-state transistors. …”

(“Howard Hathaway Aiken”, by J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

Besides leading the development of “the first automatic digital calculator” built in the U.S. and the subsequent Mark II, III & IV machines, Aiken’s pioneering contributions to the computer field included founding the world’s first academic program in the future discipline of computer science – years before computer science departments, influenced by it, came into existence:

“Howard Aiken’s place in the history of computers, however, is not to be measured by these four machines, interesting and important as they may have been. He recognized from the start that the computers being planned and constructed would require mathematicians to program them, and he was aware of the shortage of such mathematically trained men and women. To fill this need, Aiken convinced Harvard to establish a course of studies leading to the master’s degree, and eventually also the doctorate, in what was to become computer science. Just as Aiken–by the force of his success, abetted by his ability to find outside funding for his programs–achieved tenure and rose to become the first full professor in the new domain of computer science, so he inaugurated at Harvard what appears to have been the first such academic program anywhere in the world. The roster of his students contains the names of many who became well known in this subject, including Gerrit Blaauw, Frederick Brooks, Jr., Kenneth Iverson, and Anthony Oettinger. As other later programs came into being, they drew directly or indirectly on Aiken’s experience at Harvard. …”

(J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

Therefore, Alfred Brooks’s IBM achievements and founding of the UNC Chapel Hill computer science department were also matters of the pride and distinction of his scientific lineage following his teacher, who had been the inventor of the first automatic digital calculator in the U.S. and the founder of the first academic computer science program in the world.

A question then naturally arises, in comparison to von Neumann: given Aiken’s prominent pioneering achievements why hasn’t he been regarded, like von Neumann has, as the “father of computers”, or at least a “father of computers”?

One clear reason is that Aiken’s first “calculating machine” wasn’t electronic. As quoted earlier, his Ph.D. research had been in electronics, especially vacuum tubes that would be the basic electronics building blocks, but he never published in that field, instead spending his time on the calculating machines project which, for Mark I and Mark II, did not use vacuum tubes like ENIAC did.

Aiken was very conservative, preferring to use only reliable components, and in those days mechanical relays were much more reliable than electronics, albeit much slower:

“… Of the four, Mark I was the most memorable because it produced such reliable results, and could run continuously for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thus, although it was very slow compared with any of the electronic machines, it produced a huge output–since unlike its electronic rivals, which had long “down times”–it ran continuously. …

…

… The Mark I was used at Harvard by a US Navy crew that included Grace Murray Hopper and Richard Bloch. Aiken was extremely conservative in his use of well-tested, well-understood elements, using electromechanical decimal rotary counters and relays…”

(J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

As a result of that conservatism, Aiken’s technology for Mark I & II was soon rendered obsolete by the emergence of the electronic ENIAC:

“… Of course, by 1946, when Mark II was becoming operational, ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, built for the Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen, Maryland, by the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering) had been completed and had demonstrated the enormous advantage of electronic elements over relays in large-scale computing machines. The path to the future thus was shifted from Aiken’s machines to ENIAC. Although Mark I and Mark II continued to do useful work for many years (which may be taken as an index of the increasing national need for computing services), their technology was obsolete.”

(I. Bernard Cohen and Gregory W. Welch with Robert V. D. Campbell, eds., Makin’ Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer, 1999, MIT Press)

There might also be doubt as to whether Aiken’s Harvard Ph.D. expertise in vacuum tubes was actually applicable to building an electronic computer:

“Although Aiken’s field of science for his doctorate was electron physics, and although the subject of his dissertation was space charge within vacuum tubes (or electron tubes), his expertise was in the physics of vacuum tubes and not in electronics, not in the design and application of circuits using vacuum tubes. …”

(I. Bernard Cohen, Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer, 2000, The MIT Press)

A second reason why Aiken has not but von Neumann has been regarded as the “father of computers” is von Neumann’s strong advocacy for the “stored program”, which led to the notion of the “von Neumann architecture” discussed in Part 5 (i).

Aiken, in his conservatism, did not trust “stored program” and so his Mark machines, I, II, III & IV, never became modern general-purpose computers:

“… Aiken is sometimes held to be reactionary because he was always wary of the concept of the “stored program” and did not incorporate it into any of his later machines. This stance did put him out of step with the main lines of computer architecture in what we may call the post-Aiken era, but it must be kept in mind that there are vast fields of computer application today in which separate identity of program must be maintained, for example, in telephone technology and what is known as ROM (“read-only memory”). In fact, computers without the stored-program feature are often designated today (for instance, by Texas Instruments Corporation) as embodying “Harvard architecture,” by which is meant “Aiken architecture.””

(J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

Aiken’s conservatism also meant that his work did not carry the broader relevance and potential like the work of von Neumann, who subsequently became a prominent leader of U.S. science as detailed in Part 5 (i).

On the other hand, compared to John von Neumann, Howard Aiken enjoyed many more years of life.

Depending on the biographical source, Aiken was born on March 8 or 9, 1900, in New Jersey.

(“Howard H. Aiken: 1964 Harry H. Goode Memorial Award Recipient”, IEEE Computer Society; and, “Howard Hathaway Aiken”, Encyclopædia Britannica)

So when von Neumann died of cancer in February 1957 at the age of 53, Aiken was already nearly 57. He was alive, but had become even more conservative, and out-of-date in his scientific knowledge – a fact even Alfred Brooks, a Harvard Ph.D. graduate under Aiken and one of Aiken’s “most devoted disciples”, later acknowledged:

“In certain respects, Aiken had rapidly become a conservative figure in the world of computing. In the 1950s he was already “old” by the standards of this rapidly advancing science, art, and technology. Computer science and invention had become a young man’s game. … In the words of Maurice Wilkes, the new computer innovators were young men with “green fingers for electronic circuits,” many of whom had come from experience with radar and “were used to wide bandwidths and short pulses.”

…

… Even Fred Brooks, one of Aiken’s most devoted disciples, admitted in retrospect that the Harvard Comp Lab had a “Charles River view of the world”—that the students were not fully aware of the developments taking place in other institutions (including MIT, just down the river).”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

But Howard Aiken had his own bigger ambitions, namely to become a businessman and to start his own computer company.

Like others in the computing field, such as Louis Fein, Aiken was a consultant to military research projects, in his case at Lockheed Missile and Space Division in California; in 1961 Aiken retired early from Harvard with the intention of starting his own company, to develop microcomputers with the help of a “close associate”, Cuthbert Hurd, and a Lockheed assistant director of engineering:

“In 1961, Aiken decided to take advantage of Harvard’s provision for early retirement and to begin a new career. He could have continued in his professorship for another five years, and possibly even for a few years after that. Instead, he chose to take advantage of a university rule that permitted tenured members of the faculty to retire at the age of 60. … Mary Aiken recalls that he had a disagreement with some member of the university administration and decided that the time had come to start a new life. …

Tony Oettinger has written that Aiken had always said that he was at least as smart as most businessmen and wanted to prove that he was right. Fred Brooks concurs in this opinion. In a telephone conversation with Cuthbert Hurd, who was a close associate of Aiken’s, especially after his retirement from Harvard, I was given confirmation of this reason for Aiken’s having retired early from Harvard. Hurd said that he had never discussed this matter with Aiken, but that on two or three occasions when Aiken was in California, where he was a regular consultant for the Lockheed Missile and Space Division, the two of them had “talked at great length about organizing a company.” “If we had done it and if it had been successful,” Hurd mused, “it would have been the first microcomputer computer company in the world.” Hurd told me that “an Assistant Director of Engineering at Lockheed . . . was doing the design work,” and that “Howard, along with that man and me” would form the new company. …”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

“It would have been the first microcomputer computer company in the world”, as Aiken’s close associate Cuthbert Hurd later recalled, had they gone ahead and form the company together.

Rather intriguingly, Lockheed Missile and Space Division, based in the future Silicon Valley region of Northern California, had been founded in the same year 1956 as the occurrence of many significant events in the computing field mentioned earlier, such as the founding of the IBM San Jose research laboratory; Lockheed settled in the neighboring city of Sunnyvale:

“The Bayshore Freeway was still a two-lane road, and 275 acres of bean fields adjacent to Moffett Field were purchased in 1956 to become the home of Lockheed Missile & Space Division (now Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company). The company chose the site because of the stellar talent pool provided by nearby colleges and universities, the good weather, quality of living and proximity to an airport.

But while times seemed quiet, America was shrouded in uncertainty, and Lockheed was expanding its mission to confront the challenges of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had developed an offensive nuclear capability, and the United States was in desperate need of better intelligence to characterize the potential threat and respond accordingly.

Addressing both concerns, the first reconnaissance satellite, called Corona, and the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) were designed and built in just a few short years by the company’s engineers and scientists — armed only with slide rules, mechanical calculators, the basic laws of physics and an abundance of imagination.

By 1960, the Sunnyvale population had reached 53,000 — a five-fold increase over what it was just 10 years earlier. Employees at Lockheed, by that time, topped 20,000. In parallel to the population boom, Sunnyvale would become a preferred location for many semiconductor and high-technology companies.”

(“Lockheed grew up with Sunnyvale”, Myles D. Crandall, February 25, 2007, Silicon Valley Business Journal)

It’s hard to believe but true, that the Lockheed military aerospace engineers came in 1956 “armed only with slide rules, mechanical calculators” – so primitive compared to the Southern California military aerospace companies like Raytheon, which had had their own computer development activities even in the early 1950s as reviewed in Part 5 (i) and as shown in Fein’s past work.

But at least they came; and soon some of them were eager – I would assume there were others besides an assistant director of engineering at a management level – to form a new company with Howard Aiken, the ‘godfather’ of mechanical calculators if I may say so, to develop microcomputers.

These Lockheed engineers may have also wished for computing help from Hewlett-Packard, the nascent Silicon Valley’s founding company – but HP wasn’t into it as later recalled by Silicon Valley pioneer Douglas Engelbart about that era, as discussed in Part 5 (i).

Nonetheless it was one more factor turning things in favor of Northern California in 1956, when in his hospital bed John von Neumann planned a move to the University of California, likely choosing Southern California’s UCLA over Northern California’s UC Berkeley as reviewed in Part 5 (i).

Lockheed’s 1956 arrival, initially at Stanford’s industrial park, also boosted that university’s Cold War-oriented scientific research guided by Provost Frederick Terman, with Lockheed bringing in two leading missiles and dynamics experts, Nicholas Hoff and Daniel Bershader, to Stanford’s faculty:

“… Lockheed’s Space and Missile Division, which decided to locate in Stanford’s industrial park in 1956, suggested that Terman let the company offer an appointment at Stanford to one of the nation’s leading aeronautical engineers, Nicholas Hoff, whom the company believed it would be unable to hire without this incentive. Hoff, head of aeronautical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, had received his degree from Stanford in the early 1940s and after the war had begun research on supersonic aircraft and missiles with the support of substantial military contracts. To Terman, Lockheed’s proposal was yet another way to link firmly the engineering school and industry and, at no cost to Stanford, to improve the aeronautical engineering program, which had been languishing for lack of funds since World War II. … Lockheed also arranged for the head of its gas dynamics division, Daniel Bershader, to teach part-time at Stanford; he soon received a permanent appointment. As a result of Lockheed’s selection of Hoff and Bershader, Stanford’s aeronautical engineering program shifted decisively from research on commercial airplane structures to research related to guided missiles and space vehicles. … ”

(Rebecca S. Lowen, 1997, University of California Press)

In 1956, even more important to Silicon Valley, and to the landscape of high technology, was the arrival of the semiconductor industry that would give meaning to the name “Silicon Valley”:

“In September 1955 William Shockley and Arnold Beckman agreed to found the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory as a Division of Beckman Instruments “to engage promptly and vigorously in activities related to semiconductors.” Shockley rented a building … in Mountain View, California, began recruiting “the most creative team in the world for developing and producing transistors.” He attracted extremely capable engineers and scientists, including Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who learned about and developed technologies and processes related to silicon and diffusion while working there. In December 1956 Shockley shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the transistor, but his staff was becoming disenchanted with his difficult management style. They also felt the company should pursue more immediate opportunities for producing silicon transistors rather than the distant promise of a challenging four-layer p-n-p-n diode he had conceived at Bell Labs for telephone switching applications.

After unsuccessfully asking Beckman to hire a new manager, eight Shockley employees – including Moore and Noyce plus Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last and Sheldon Roberts – resigned in September 1957 and founded the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation in Palo Alto. Many other employees, from technicians to PhDs, soon followed. Over the next decade, Fairchild grew into of the most important and innovative companies in the semiconductor industry, laying the technological and cultural foundations of Silicon Valley while spinning off dozens of new high-tech start-ups, including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel. Shockley continued pursuing his four-layer diode but his company never realized a profit. Beckman sold the operation to Clevite Corporation in 1960. Shockley became a professor of electrical engineering and applied science at Stanford University.”

(“1956: Silicon Comes to Silicon Valley”, The Silicon Engine, Computer History Museum)

Described in the above, a 1957 rebellion by 8 disciples of William Shockley, a 1956 Nobel Physics Prize winner for his role in the invention of the transistor, at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory against his “difficult management style” and orthodox scientific focus was a watershed event that led to the founding of the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation by this younger generation of scientists and engineers, a company that would lay “the technological and cultural foundations of Silicon Valley”.

In that bustling environment, amidst a new semiconductor industry and the Lockheed engineers eager to take part, Howard Aiken, once a prominent computer pioneer and leading competitor to John von Neumann but not winning the recognition to be a “father of computers”, had a second chance in 1961 upon retiring from Harvard, to become the ‘father of microcomputers’ – if I may use the phrase.

Doing so in the fledgling Silicon Valley might even let Aiken share some glories of its founding with distinguished others, most notably Stanford Provost Frederick Terman – born like Aiken at the turn of the century and mentor to the Hewlett-Packard founders – and the Fairchild Semiconductor founding group – rebels against their conservative mentor William Shockley.

But this second chance did not materialize for Aiken, as Hurd later recalled that they did not follow through with the plan:

“… Aiken, Hurd continued, “wanted me to help raise the money.” They “never followed through” with this plan. “I thought that maybe he wanted to be rich,” Hurd concluded, “and was thinking about starting the company for that reason.””

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

Now I am curious. Why did Aiken and Hurd not follow through with their plan, given that, as quoted earlier, “an Assistant Director of Engineering at Lockheed . . . was doing the design work” already?

Hurd’s somewhat coy explanation was that Aiken “wanted me to help raise the money”, and he thought Aiken “wanted to be rich” and “was thinking about starting the company for that reason”.

Reading Hurd’s descriptions, I can see two possible scenarios why they did not follow through, both to do with money: one, the two men could not agree on ownership sharing, i.e., Hurd was unwilling to settle for the role of ‘helper’, feeling that Aiken wanted too much; and two, Hurd was idealistic and viewed Aiken as too money-oriented to be in computer development with.

Thus, finding out who Cuthbert Hurd was would help understand his mindset in relation to Aiken.

Hurd had also been a computer pioneer, a key driving force behind IBM’s first commercial general-purpose computer, IBM Model 701, the so-called “Defense Calculator” discussed in Part 5 (i), that was launched during the Korean War era:

“Dr. Hurd was a mathematician at the Atomic Energy Commission laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., when he joined I.B.M. in 1949 as its director of applied science. A year later, after the outbreak of the Korean War, he was one of two people assigned to determine how I.B.M. could contribute to the war effort.

Making a bold proposal, Dr. Hurd and his partner, James Birkenstock, recommended that the company design and build a general-purpose computer, bearing the heavy expense itself so that I.B.M. would own the patents. The new machine, the I.B.M. 701, cost $3 million to develop and was introduced with great fanfare in 1952, putting I.B.M. on the path to becoming the dominant force in the computer industry.

Dr. Hurd went on to help develop several other I.B.M. computers and served as a consultant to the company for years after leaving in 1962 to become chairman of the board of the Computer Usage Company, the first independent computer software company. …”

(“Cuthbert Hurd, 85, Computer Pioneer at I.B.M.”, by Laurence Zuckerman, June 2, 1996, The New York Times)

Given Hurd’s backgrounds as above, the first scenario why Aiken and Hurd did not materialize their plan to start a computer company is quite possible: having been a key IBM computer-development executive, Hurd was not content with just helping “raise the money” for the more famous Aiken while settling for much less himself; interestingly, Hurd left IBM in 1962, the year after Aiken had left Harvard in 1961, and so the timing was right for the two to consider start a computer company together; the fact that Hurd, originally a mathematician, left IBM to become the board chairman of “the first independent computer software company”, the Computer Usage Company, confirmed that he deserved a top leadership position in a smaller company.

It also made logical sense in this context that, without collaboration with Aiken, Hurd would focus on computer software and usage, not on developing computers.

Not getting to found the world’s first microcomputer company, Aiken, who decades earlier before attending graduate school had been a chief electrical engineer at the Madison Gas and Electric Company in Wisconsin, in 1961 indeed became a businessman in New York, while also spending part of his academic retirement time in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as the University of Miami’s “Distinguished Professor of Information Technology”:

“… While in high school he also worked twelve hours a night at the Indianapolis Light and Heat Company. In 1919 he entered the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, supporting himself throughout his four years there by working as an operating engineer at the Madison Gas and Electric Company. Aiken received a degree in electrical engineering in 1923; he continued to work for Madison Gas, now as chief engineer, responsible for the design and reconstruction of the company’s electric generating station. He remained with Madison Gas until 1928.

…

After spending ten years as an electrical engineer, Aiken felt he had chosen the wrong field. He decided to study mathematics and physics, and enrolled for a year at the University of Chicago for that purpose. He continued his studies at Harvard, where he obtained a master’s degree in physics in 1937 and a doctorate in physics in 1939. …

…

In 1961 Aiken retired from Harvard and moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He became Distinguished Professor of Information Technology at the University of Miami, helping the school set up a computer science program and a computing center. He also founded Howard Aiken Industries Incorporated, a New York consulting concern. He had always told friends that a good professor with half a mind should be able to run circles around people in industry. Now he would prove it. He said he would spend the remainder of his life trying to make money, and he did just that.”

(Robert Slater, Portraits in Silicon, 1987, The MIT Press)

As indicated in the above, Aiken’s friends, not just Hurd, knew that Aiken always wanted to make money as a businessman in the industry; in my opinion, even the name he chose for his company, Howard Aiken Industries Incorporated, showed his ambition very clearly that it would be his own industries.

Aiken’s company specialized in taking over ailing companies, fixing and then selling them:

“… Essentially, Aiken Industries specialized in taking over companies that were ailing and bringing them back to good health, at which point they were sold. He could not help but be active at the university level, and he accepted a part-time teaching post at the nearby University of Miami, becoming a colleague of John Curtiss.”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

I have to wonder how much Aiken, busy making money in his industries, actually really worked on “setting up a computer science program and a computing center” at the University of Miami as in the second previous quote, since as in the above quote John Curtiss was already a professor there. As reviewed earlier and in Part 5 (i), Curtiss, a former head of the applied mathematics division at the National Bureau of Standards overseeing the INA at UCLA, and the founding president of the ACM, had been fired from the Bureau in 1953 – a victim of McCarthyism-type politics.

Richard McGrath, a lawyer in a senior role at Aiken Industries, later confirmed that he and others were “helping him to build his company” – Howard Aiken Industries Inc., later called Norlin Technologies Inc. – “assisted” Aiken and “managed … for Howard” – the kind of role Cuthbert Hurd had likely been unwilling to accept:

“I was able to learn more about Aiken’s activities during the years after his retirement from Harvard from Richard McGrath, an attorney who was closely associated with Aiken from 1962 to 1973. During these years, McGrath—accompanied by Martin Flaherty and James Marsh—was “almost constantly on the road” with Aiken, “helping him to build his company (which was originally known as Howard Aiken Industries Inc. but was later called Norlin Technologies Inc.).” The three of them “assisted” Aiken in the “process of acquiring companies that became divisions of Aiken Industries.” According to McGrath, Flaherty and Marsh “then managed several of the companies for Howard” while he served in a legal capacity.”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

According to McGrath, Aiken’s management style was “like a visiting fireman”:

“McGrath remembers Aiken as “a born teacher and mentor” who “left an indelible imprint on all our lives.” … What McGrath found particularly noteworthy was Aiken’s “management style,” the way in which “he put together a highly successful high technology company with multiple divisions, without ever having an office or secretary of his own.” Aiken, McGrath concluded, “literally worked out of his hat,” perfecting “the art of visitation, traveling from division to division like a visiting fireman.””

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

I can imagine Charles River water literally pouring out of the magic hat of this “visiting fireman”.

If Howard Aiken thought of himself and his name as the real worth, it shouldn’t have been unexpected. The relationship between Aiken, Harvard and IBM in the development of Harvard Mark I had illustrated the prominent sense of special importance Aiken and Harvard regarded themselves with.

The Harvard-IBM agreement for building the Mark machines clearly defined the special privilege position Harvard had over IBM:

“By March 31, 1939, the final agreement had been drawn up and signed. IBM agreed (1) “to construct for Harvard an automatic computing plant comprising machines for automatically carrying out a series of mathematical computations adaptable for the solution of problems in scientific fields.” Harvard agreed (2) to furnish “without charge” the structural foundation, and (3) to appoint “certain members of the faculty or staff or student body” to cooperate with “the engineering and research divisions of IBM in completing the design and testing.” It was agreed (4) that all Harvard personnel assigned to this project would sign a standard “nondisclosure” agreement to protect IBM’s proprietary technical and inventive rights. IBM (5) would receive no compensation, nor were any charges to be made to Harvard. The finished “plant” would become “the property of Harvard.” …”

(J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

In the 5-point agreement above between IBM and Harvard, other than Point (2) that was logically Harvard’s role to provide the space to house the machines, and Point (4) that prevented Harvard personnel from disclosing IBM proprietary information, the stipulations were in Harvard’s favor: it obliged IBM to pay for building the Mark machines, do the construction with the involvements of some Harvard personnel, and give the product’s full ownership to Harvard.

Moreover, after Mark I’s completion when IBM president Thomas Watson, Sr. was going to attend the Harvard ceremonies for its dedication, Harvard was so brimming of self-esteem that its press release did not want to acknowledge that the machine had been built by IBM, instead emphasizing that “the inventor, Commander Howard H. Aiken, U.S.N.R,” was in charge of the project; Harvard’s attitude really irritated Watson:

“The Harvard News Office, in close consultation with Aiken, prepared a news release. It was evidently not considered necessary to clear the release with IBM… The release was headed “World’s greatest mathematical calculator” and bore the statement: “The NAVY, which has sole use of the machine, has approved this story and set this release date [Monday papers, August 7, 1944].” The first five paragraphs … stated that the machine would be presented to Harvard by IBM, that it would solve many types of mathematical problems, that the presentation would be made “by Mr. Thomas J. Watson, president of International Business Machines Corporation,” that the machine was “new in principle,” and was an “algebraic super-brain.” Then followed the bold unqualified statement that “In charge of the activity…is the inventor, Commander Howard H. Aiken, U.S.N.R,” who “worked out the theory which made the machine possible.” It may be observed that not only was Aiken designated “the inventor,” but no reason had been given thus far for IBM being the donor-it had not even been mentioned that IBM had actually constructed the machine. In fact, in the whole eight pages, the only reference to IBM’s contribution was a single paragraph later on in the release.

Two years of research were required to develop the basic theory. Six years of design, construction, and testing were necessary to transform Commander Aiken’s original conception into a completed machine. This work was carried on at the Engineering Laboratory of the International Business Machines Corporation at Endicott, N.Y., under the joint direction of Commander Aiken and Clair D. Lake. They were assisted in the detailed design of the machine by Frank E. Hamilton and Benjamin M. Durfee.

It is said that when Watson arrived in Boston accompanied by his wife and first saw the news story, he became so irate that he even planned to return to New York without attending either the ceremonial luncheon or the formal dedication ceremonies.When Watson arrived at his hotel, he telephoned–so the story goes–to his Harvard hosts, threatening to boycott the ceremonies on the following day. Conant and Aiken thereupon rushed from Cambridge to Boston to placate Watson, who launched into a furious tirade against Aiken and (presumably) Harvard. Evidently Conant and Aiken succeeded in calming Watson, who did attend the dedication on the following day and gave a star performance.”

(J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

Learning how Harvard and Aiken had treated IBM president Thomas Watson in the days of Mark I helps one understand that when a mid-level IBM executive like Cuthbert Hurd was interested in getting into business with Aiken in 1961-1962, it likely had to be Hurd helping Aiken build Aiken’s company – something lawyer Richard McGrath then did.

In 1967 Aiken retired again, this time from his own company – as quoted earlier it was Howard Aiken Industries Inc. later renamed Norlin Technologies Inc. – and became its vice chairman of the board; again, Aiken did not fully retire but returned to working as a computer consultant for big technology companies, now Monsanto in addition to Lockheed:

“During the 1973 interview, Hank Tropp questioned Aiken about aspects of his life and career after leaving Harvard. Aiken referred, first of all, to his “forming Aiken Industries, beginning in 1961” and his becoming “vice-chairman of the board” in 1967. “So now,” Aiken said, “I go to board meetings, but I’m not going at it the way I used to. . . . When they kicked me out of Harvard, I had to find a new job and that was Aiken Industries. And when they kicked me out, I had to find a new job and went into the consulting business. So now I spend a good deal of time at Monsanto.” … Aiken said that he had been a consultant at Lockheed “for many years,” but that he had “quit that this year.”

Once the subject had been brought up, Aiken felt the need to discuss the subject at length. “You can’t quit,” he said. “At the time you quit, you’ve had it.” “If I were to quit work and sit here in this study,” he continued, “I think I’d be dead very soon. I don’t think I’d last.”

… During his last years, Aiken continued his long-time service for the aerospace industry in California, making periodic visits to Lockheed Missiles Company. Cuthbert Hurd gave me a list of some people with whom Aiken was associated in California when he used to come out to the West Coast on his regular visits. One of them was George Garrett, who, Hurd informed me, “was for a while the Director of Computer Activities at Lockheed Missiles. Howard and George saw a great deal of each other for a certain period.” …”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

Just like I have remarked earlier, Howard Aiken was a “godfather” of what Lockheed Missiles was doing in the computing field – and he did his work by regularly visiting like a fireman.

By now Aiken was rich, and he continued to care about developing microcomputers, or what would become “personal computers”; in 1970, Aiken again discussed with Cuthbert Hurd a plan to start a new computer company, PANDATA, this time as the investor he would offer Hurd the board chairman position:

“Hurd, on another occasion, gave some further details on a new company that Aiken had proposed to form. He recalled that he, Aiken and William Main had met several times in 1970 “to discuss the formation of a corporation to be called PANDATA.” The three had “discussed the idea of what was to become a microprocessor and personal computer.” Aiken, according to Hurd, “had an early vision of the usefulness of such devices,” “believed that they could be mass produced at a low cost,” and “wished to form an integrated company to manufacture and sell them.” Aiken wanted Hurd “to help form the company, be chairman of the board, and raise the money.” Aiken himself “wished to make a considerable investment in the new company.” …”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

So it looked like that in 1970 Howard Aiken had a third chance, with his idea of “a microprocessor and personal computer”, to become the ‘father of personal computers’ this time.

The name of the third partner this time – the last time it would have been a Lockheed assistant director of engineering – was reported in Bernard Cohen’s biography of Aiken: William Main.

Main had been Aiken’s co-organizer of a 1962 symposium on switching theory in space technology, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale.

(Howard Aiken and William F. Main, eds., Switching theory in space technology: [Symposium on the Application of Switching Theory in Space Technology, held at Sunnyvale, California, February 27-28 and March 1, 1962], 1963, Stanford University Press)

But again, a new computer company with Aiken and Hurd together did not materialize:

“… Hurd reported, however, that he “was busy at the time with other activities” and that Aiken “died before the venture could be launched.””

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

At least Hurd was interested this time in 1970, as quoted – apparently because he was offered the board chairmanship – but understandably he was already the board chairman of the Computer Usage Company and so would like to do it with Aiken sometime later.

With or without Hurd, Aiken continued to pursue his vision of miniaturization of computers – now with the Monsanto Chemical Company:

“One of Aiken’s final computer-related assignments in these post-retirement years was for the Monsanto Chemical Company, which was trying to develop magnetic bubbles as the basis of a new memory technology. At the time of the 1973 interview, Aiken was enthusiastic about magnetic-bubble technology. This led him to talk about miniaturization in general. He had on the table a hand-held Bowman electronic calculator, and he showed an obvious sense of delight as he discussed how powerful a tool this small device was. He said that he foresaw a time when a machine the size of this calculator would be more powerful than mainframe computers. …”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

Aiken also found someone else to help him, Dick Bloch, who started a new company Genesis to invest in new technology ideas – the concept was reminiscent of Aiken Industries, but through starting new companies instead of buying old companies, and then selling the stake:

“… Aiken had never been concerned to patent his innovations while a member of the Harvard faculty, and the innovations he produced for Monsanto were patented in the company’s name rather than his. But he was concerned with a patent for one of his own inventions, the creation of his last retirement years. The invention in question was related to the general problems of encryption and decoding and the security of computer data.

Aiken went into some detail about this most recent invention and the company that was in the process of being organized to exploit his innovations in relation to the security of computer information. “That’s the Information Security Corporation,” Aiken said. It was “being formed by Dick Bloch to exploit a cryptographic invention of mine.” The parent company was called Genesis. In an earlier interview with Bloch, Tropp discovered that the primary mission of Genesis was to seek new ideas that could be exploited commercially and then to find financing. Once the venture was started, Genesis would provide the early management; as soon as the company was able to stand on its own feet, however, Bloch and Genesis would, in a sense, “get out and look for something else.” …”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

The man Aiken referred to, Dick Bloch, or Richard Bloch as in an earlier quote about a Navy crew using Harvard Mark I, had been the chief operating officer of Aiken’s Mark I project, and then an executive in the aerospace and computer industries:

“Richard M. Bloch, a pioneer in the development and design of digital computers, died of cancer on May 22 in Framingham, Mass. He was 78 and lived in Marlborough, Mass.

As chief operations officer at Harvard University’s Computation Laboratory in the 1940’s, Mr. Bloch helped design and program the first automatic digital computer, the Mark 1.

…

Over the succeeding years, Mr. Bloch held a number of administrative positions in the rapidly growing computer industry, including general manager of the computer division of Raytheon, vice president for technical operations at Honeywell, vice president for corporate development at the Auerbach Corporation and vice president of the advanced systems division of General Electric.

He was also chairman and chief executive of the Artificial Intelligence Corporation and the Meiko Scientific Corporation.”

(“Richard Bloch, 78, Pioneer in Digital Computers”, by William H. Honan, May 29, 2000, The New York Times)

What a pity! The inventor of the world’s first “automatic digital computer” – officially a “calculating machine” as cited earlier – after becoming a businessman for over a decade and getting rich, in the end still had to rely on a former deputy from his first Harvard project 3 decades ago to get his new technology ideas into business.

And that company, Genesis, and its subsidiary Information Security Corporation set up to exploit a cryptographic invention of Aiken’s as in the second previous quote, likely did not succeed since Bloch’s The New York Times obituary made no mention of either.

Noteworthy in Bloch’s May 29, 2000 obituary is the fact that he was once the general manager of Raytheon’s computer division – presumably the place Louis Fein had once worked developing a computer for the Navy in Southern California.

I note that Richard Bloch was also a victim of cancer, although at the age of 78 he faired better than John Carr at 73.

Aiken’s 1973 interview by Henry Tropp quoted in Bernard Cohen’s biography of Aiken, in which Aiken talked about his consulting for Monsanto, his quitting Lockheed consulting that year, and a new company with Dick Bloch, was conducted on February 26-27.

(“Interviewee: Howard Aiken (1900-1973) Interviewers: Henry Tropp and I.B. Cohen”, February 26-27, 1973, Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

About 10 days later it was Aiken’s birthday – March 8 or 9 as mentioned earlier – and a few days after that, on March 14 Howard Aiken died in his sleep in a hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, during a consulting visit to Monsanto:

“Howard Aiken died in his sleep in a hotel in St. Louis on 14 March 1973. He was in St. Louis for one of his regular consultations with Monsanto. He was 73 years old.”

(I. Bernard Cohen, 2000, The MIT Press)

Aiken was 73, the same age John Carr died at decades later, although Aiken wasn’t a victim of cancer that Carr would be.

In comparison, John Curtiss, Aiken’s retirement colleague at the University of Miami, former founding president of ACM and a victim of McCarthyism-type politics at the National Bureau of Standards, later died in 1977 at only 67; Curtiss was also a Harvard Ph.D. alumnus.

(J. A. N. Lee, eds., 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

From my angle of analysis, Aiken lived a relatively long life compared to his contemporary leading computer pioneer John von Neumann who is regarded as the “father of computers” that Aiken isn’t – 20 years longer – whereas Carr lived a relatively short life compared to his contemporary computer science pioneer Alfred Brooks, who is living and in 2015 retired from UNC Chapel Hill at 84.

But Aiken missed at least two further chances, following his early retirement from Harvard to enter the industry, to become the ‘father’ of something in the computer world – microcomputers, then personal computers – as a result of his would-be collaborator Cuthbert Hurd not going forward with it each time, by Hurd’s own candid admission.

As quoted earlier, Cuthbert Hurd later said that that Aiken “died before the venture could be launched”, referring to the company PANDATA he, Aiken and William Main talked about in 1970 – the second and last such chance for Aiken – for developing “a microprocessor and personal computer”.

The year after Aiken’s death, in 1974 Hurd left his board chairmanship at Computer Usage Company and started his own company, Cuthbert C. Hurd Associates:

“… From 1949 to 1962 he worked at IBM, where he founded the Applied Science Department and pushed reluctant management into the world of computing. Hurd later became director of the IBM Electronic Data Processing Machines Division.

After 1962 he served as chairman of the Computer Usage Company, the first independent computer software company, until 1974 when he formed Cuthbert C. Hurd Associates.”

(“Cuthbert Hurd: Biography”, Engineering and Technology History Wiki)

Now I begin to doubt Hurd’s sincerity.

If Hurd could leave IBM in 1962 following Aiken’s 1961 Harvard retirement and starting Aiken Industries, it suggested that he could get into a new business with Aiken, but that they did not reach an agreement that time.

But if Hurd then could leave the independent computer software company board chairmanship in 1974 after Aiken’s 1973 death, and had in effect agreed to “the venture” with Aiken in 1970 but just hadn’t “launched” it, why couldn’t he have left to launch it earlier? Aiken was already 70 years of age in 1970 when he asked Hurd to “help form the company, be chairman of the board, and raise the money” – at that age Aiken’s prospect of starting a new company very much dwindled in the twilight.

The pattern of the timing of Hurd’s departure from an over-decade-long corporate position, both in 1962 and 1974, that it was the year after something had happened with Aiken, showed that Hurd was repeatedly capable of changing a long-time career job, but just not doing it a little earlier to start a business with Aiken.

That leads to the second possible scenario raised earlier regarding why Hurd did not follow through with the plans to start a company with Aiken: Hurd might be idealistic, and dismissive or even contemptuous of Aiken’s preoccupation with getting rich. Note that the first scenario, Hurd and Aiken not agreeing on ownership sharing, as discussed became less likely in 1970 when Hurd was offered the board chair position and in effect agreed to launching a venture later.

It turned out that Cuthbert Hurd not only was a close associate of Howard Aiken’s but had been a close associate of John von Neumann’s also; and so a comparison of his attitudes toward Aiken versus toward von Neumann can help determine if the second scenario above was likely the case.

In a 1981 interview by Nancy Stern on the history of computer development in his personal experience, Hurd talked in great depth about von Neumann, referring to the name over 60 times, but mentioned Aiken only twice and only in the context of a von Neumann-Aiken rivalry as follows (name underline emphases added):

“STERN: Can you tell me about when you first met Von Neumann?

HURD: I’m fuzzy, I don’t know whether it was 1947, or 1948. I met him at some meeting of the American Mathematical Society. I don’t know whether it was in Washington or New York. Some place east with the American Mathematical Society. And of course he was known as a great mathematician. It was also known he was interested in computers. …

…

STERN: Now when did you meet him again after that initial [time]?

HURD: I met him at normal times, up between whenever that was until the time I joined IBM. I met him at normal times in the sense of, there were a few conferences which we would now call computer conferences. And I’d see him around, at one of those places that he was on the program.

STERN: Can you recall where some of those conferences were? We’re talking about the Harvard computing conferences?

HURD: Yes. I would be fairly sure but not certain that he would not be at one.

STERN: Why not?

HURD: I don’t think that he and Aiken were close.

STERN: Well they both sat on the National Research Council Meeting.

HURD: I don’t think they were close.

STERN: Was it a kind of competition because they were both doing computing projects, do you think?

HURD: I think so, although neither one ever said that to me. Neither one ever said, I knew Howard Aiken very well. Neither of them ever said anything to me, derogatory or anything whatsoever about the other, but I just observed that those two gentlemen were not necessarily very close. …”

(“An Interview with CUTHBERT C. HURD”, by Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In the above, Hurd clearly tried to emphasize that Aiken and von Neumann did not quite like each other. Given that, Hurd’s barely mentioning Aiken in this 1981 interview while detailing his relationship with, knowledge about and admiration of von Neumann clearly indicated his preference for von Neumann over Aiken.

Hurd talked about von Neumann’s quick mastery of the body of knowledge of psychiatry while terminally ill with cancer:

“STERN: Well, I was thinking even in terms of things that had nothing to do with what people tell me, but the conversion to Catholicism at the last minute would not be something one would expect from someone like Von Neumann.

HURD: That’s right and that was the one thing I was going to mention to you. And I never understood that. I didn’t. I didn’t have anything against it. He and I never talked about religion at all. We didn’t talk about philosophy, and I spent two and a half days a month for this period or whatever it was. Plus other times. And I had the impression somewhere along the line he became interested in psychiatry. And their was a colonel I think in the air force who was his psychiatrist, and somebody told me that when John got interested in psychiatry, that he quickly learned more about formal psychiatry, than the people who the psychiatrist knew. And I didn’t understand the significance of that. But I was told this, maybe by Klari. But other than that, I was surprised, because at the time of the funeral, let’s see, I went down and I hired a car, and I went to where Klari was and his family. Took them to church, wherever they went afterwards. It was a Catholic church. And I was a little surprised, because he never talked about religion.

…

STERN: … But was Klari surprised about the conversion?

HURD: I don’t remember her saying so. I don’t think she was Catholic either.”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In the above, Hurd did not explain why von Neumann had a psychiatrist, who was provided by the Air Force – as in Part 5 (i) von Neumann was a leading scientific adviser for the U.S. Air Force – presumably it was to help him cope with his life-ending illness.

As quoted, at the time of von Neumann’s death Hurd was very close to von Neumann’s family, and was the person chauffeuring and accompanying them to von Neumann’s church funeral and wherever they attended afterwards.

Both Hurd and the interviewer Nancy Stern expressed perplexity about von Neumann’s conversion to Catholicism prior to his death – von Neumann’s quick mastery of psychiatry happened around that time, when he also had an Air Force colonel psychiatrist.

On related scientific subjects, Hurd pointed out that von Neumann had full knowledge of neurophysiology, and had pioneering ideas for the mathematical analysis of the brain:

“STERN: Now in terms of this interest in psychiatry that you mentioned, he also had this interest in the McCulloch-Pitts research that related to the computer, or the brain as a kind of a computer. Did he speak about that at all, to you?

HURD: Well, yes. I think it would be clearer that he knew at that time as much about neurophysiology as was known.

STERN: That’s quite a statement considering he was a mathematician.

HURD: He believed, I am sure, that it was possible to find out how the brain works. There were ways to do that. And I think he had in his mind the way of going about discovering it. And he thought it was associated with what we now call software. The kind of coding, programs in the brain, and I could never find out how he intended to go about that. I’m convinced that he thought he could do that. Well we talked about that. And we also talked about his paper on how he proved that unreliable components can be used to produce a reliable machine. We used to talk about that. And how we arrived at that numerical analysis. …”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

In the above two quotes, Hurd told of an von Neumann who could quickly master the full body of knowledge of various scientific disciplines, and who would try to pioneer studies of them from mathematical perspectives.

In what Hurd described, I can already see an instance of contrast between Aiken and von Neumann: the conservative Aiken would only use reliable components for his Mark I, and thus mechanical relays rather than electronic vacuum tubes, but the ambitious and brilliant von Neumann proved mathematically that “unreliable components can be used to produce a reliable machine”.

Hurd described von Neumann’s personality as friendly and approachable in spite of his greatness:

“HURD: … You asked once of a great man talking to the subordinates, in our association he never talked down to me. But in almost every case he always was far ahead of me in his thoughts about a subject. He never talked down to me, but I know he had lots of thoughts including the one that you just talked about, but he never discussed them.”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

This particular view of von Neumann that Hurd gave is one John Nash, whose Ph.D. research idea was quickly dismissed by von Neumann, would likely disagree; as in Part 2, Nash’s impressions included that von Neumann, according to Sylvia Nasar in her book “A Beautiful Mind”, “had the preoccupied air of a busy executive”.

To the scientists close to von Neumann, such as Hurd, it was like a mystery that a mathematical genius – the only genius Hungary had produced in that era according to Nobel Physics Prize winner Eugene Wigner quoted in Part 5 (i) – who was born Jewish, near the end of his life converted to Catholicism; as Hurd said, quoted earlier, “I never understood that”, and “I was a little surprised”.

The economist Oskar Morgenstern, von Neumann’s collaborator and co-founder of the game theory in mathematical economics, was quite critical of von Neumann’s religious conversion:

Of this deathbed conversion, Morgenstern told Heims, “He was of course completely agnostic all his life, and then he suddenly turned Catholic—it doesn’t agree with anything whatsoever in his attitude, outlook and thinking when he was healthy.” …”

(William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma, 1993, Anchor Books)

Perhaps in his hospital bed von Neumann was no longer “agnostic” like Morgenstern had viewed him as, and no longer believed that the physical world at the quantum level was not governed by causality – a worldview he had advocated in relation to his mathematics of quantum mechanics, discussed in Part 4.

The conversion occurred when von Neumann knew he was terminally ill; he suddenly decided to do so, and Father Anselm Strittmatter, a Benedictine monk, baptized him and acted as his priest in his last year of life:

“As the end neared, von Neumann converted to Catholicism, this time sincerely. … A Benedictine monk, Father Anselm Strittmatter, was found to preside over his conversion and baptism. Von Neumann saw him regularly the last year of his life.

… The conversion did not give von Neumann much peace. Until the end he remained terrified of death, Strittmatter recalled.”

(William Poundstone, 1993, Anchor Books)

I wonder if Father Anselm Strittmatter’s counselling influenced the decision by John von Neumann in 1956 while in hospital, who continued his work as a U.S. Atomic Energy Commissioner and key scientific adviser to the U.S. Air Force, to move to the University of California and focus on computer research – most likely at UCLA as in Part 5 (i) – and if so, whether it was due to increased fear of nuclear radiation – a factor disfavoring UC Berkeley as his choice as reviewed in Part 5 (i) – or some higher spiritual thought.

Originally in 1929 in Hungary, when von Neumann married his first wife Mariette, i.e., Marina von Neumann’s mother, with the marriage was his acceptance of the Catholic faith of hers, which von Neumann did not take seriously at the time:

“In 1929, … he was invited to lecture on quantum theory for a semester at Princeton. Upon being offered the job, he resolved to marry his girlfriend, Mariette Koevesi. He wrote back to Oswald Veblen of Princeton that he had to attend to some personal matters before he could accept. Von Neumann returned to Budapest and popped the question.

His fiancée, daughter of a Budapest doctor, agreed to marry him in December. Mariette was Catholic. Von Neumann accepted his wife’s faith for the marriage. Most evidence indicates that he did not take this “conversion” very seriously. …”

(William Poundstone, 1993, Anchor Books)

So von Neumann had not taken Catholicism seriously until near death. But back in 1929 his own family and Mariette’s family were all new or recent Jewish converts to Catholicism:

“Von Neumann married Mariette Kövesi in 1929 and their daughter Marina was born in 1935. The marriage broke up in 1936 and they divorced in 1937. In 1938, von Neumann went back to Budapest and married Klára (more tenderly, Klári) Dán. Both his wives came from converted Jewish families. Von Neumann and his family did not convert until after his father had died in 1929; then, they converted to Catholicism.”

(Balazs Hargittai and István Hargittai, Wisdom of the Martians of Science: In Their Own Words with Commentaries, 2016, World Scientific)

It isn’t clear from the above story if von Neumann’s nominal conversion to Catholicism in 1929 was a result of his marriage or his parental family’s insistence. But the last time before his death, von Neumann initiated to do so in a sincere manner. A Life magazine story on the life of John von Neumann following his death, described it in the same context as the prominent honors bestowed on him around that time:

“In April 1956 Von Neumann moved into Walter Reed Hospital for good. Honors were now coming from all directions. He was awarded Yeshiva University’s first Einstein prize. In a special White House ceremony President Eisenhower presented him with the Medal of Freedom. In April the AEC gave him the Enrico Fermi award for his contribution to the theory and design of computing machines, accompanied by a $50,000 tax-free grant.

Although born of Jewish parents, Von Neumann had never practised Judaism. After his arrival in the U.S. he had been baptized a Roman Catholic. But his divorce from Mariette had put him beyond the sacraments of the Catholic Church for almost 19 years. Now he felt an urge to return. One morning he said to Klara, “I want to see a priest.” He added, “But he will have to be a special kind of priest, one that will be intellectually compatible.” Arrangements were made for special instruction to be given by a Catholic scholar from Washington. After a few weeks Von Neumann began once again to receive the sacraments.”

(“Passing of a Great Mind: John von Neumann, a Brilliant, Jovial Mathematician, Was a Prodigious Servant of Science and His Country”, by Clay Blair, Jr., February 25, 1957, Volume 42, Number 8, Life)

According to the above high-profile Life story, von Neumann had not been a religious Jew to begin with, was baptized Catholic as a result of his first marriage and attended church with his first wife until their divorce.

In this sense, the late-life request for conversion should be described as a ‘reconciliation’; and as his demanded condition of a compatible priest showed, to the end von Neumann continued to perceive differences between the Catholic Church and his intellectual interests.

In a subsequent tragedy that serves as an eerie hidden context for the comparison earlier between the “great man” John von Neumann, the “father of computers”, and the “great man” George Forsythe, the most influential person in the emergence of computer science, von Neumann’s second wife Klara (Klari) later died of drowning in 1963, decades before the 1997 drowning of Forsythe’s daughter Diana whose life I have earlier contrasted to von Neumann’s daughter Marina’s. Here the incident was described by von Neumann’s friend, the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam:

“Klari was a moody person, extremely intelligent, very nervous, and I often had the feeling that she felt that people paid attention to her mostly because she was the wife of the famous von Neumann. This was not really the case, for she was a very interesting person in her own right. Nevertheless, she had these apprehensions, which made her even more nervous. She had been married twice before (and married a fourth time after von Neumann’s death). She died in 1963 in tragic and mysterious circumstances. After leaving a party given in honor of Nobel Prize-winner Maria Mayer, she was found drowned on the beach at La Jolla, California.”

(S. M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, 1991, University of California Press)

In his 1981 interview Cuthbert Hurd was also asked about his own contributions to the computing field, and he answered by paraphrasing the most important of his own contributions in the spirit of von Neumann’s, that von Neumann interacted with and convinced senior decision makers – Hurd cited the examples of the nuclear physicist Edward Teller heading the Lawrence Livermore national lab, and IBM president Thomas Watson – of the benefit of computers, while he interacted and communicated with engineers:

“STERN: To summarize what, what would you say Von Neumann’s most significant contributions to the computing field were?

HURD: I think they were, they were two quite different things. I think irrespective of who really had the ideas first, that the publication, the promulgation of those papers which he and Burks and Goldstine wrote. I think those were very important documents. The other thing was, Von Neumann because of his reputation as a mathematician would gain the confidence of people and because he was so highly articulate gave people confidence in the fact that a computer if built would work, it would be a success. And I want to support that thing by two, two instances. When I first met Teller, and I don’t know when that was, in 1954, and Livermore got one of the first Univacs and Livermore got one of the first 701s. When I first met him, Teller said to me that the fact that Von Neumann, for whom he had the greatest respect, and who had some experience with computers felt, that use of the computer would be highly useful at Livermore, that that fact was a deciding influence on Teller’s part, on deciding to make the investment. … It was a big investment to make a computer, in the stand point that you have to have people, so the confidence that he gave Teller was a very important thing for Teller, and of course as soon as Teller made the decision other people would make the decision on the same basis, just because Teller did. I can illustrate it another way. I talked to, I just happened to be talking to Tom Watson, over the phone to Watson, and he said “Cuthbert I always remember the time you brought Von Neumann up to see us, and Von Neumann gave us confidence in what we were doing”. …

STERN: Kind of legitimating the computing field in general?

HURD: Yes.

STERN: How about your own contributions if you were to sum them up? Your most significant to the computing field.

HURD: I want to be careful not to compare myself to Von Neumann in anyway, but in the same way that Von Neumann gave some key people confidence in the field, I think the fact, that I could talk with engineers and understand what they were doing in any detail I wanted to. I was also able to communicate with people about what I knew about computing. I think that’s it in contributions. …”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

Reading this January 20, 1981 interview, in which he emphasized the von Neumann-Aiken rivalry as computer pioneers and gave glowing praises of von Neumann, but otherwise scantily mentioned Aiken, I can’t help but wonder how much Cuthbert Hurd, affected by such a mindset, really thought of the worth of Aiken’s role in any collaboration to start a new computer company.

But perhaps the most telling of Hurd’s views of von Neumann versus Aiken is Hurd’s description, in the 1981 interview, of von Neumann’s attitude toward money, that can be contrasted to Hurd’s dismissiveness toward Aiken’s focus on getting rich.

Hurd had played key roles in recruiting von Neumann for certain scientific consultancies in the atomic energy field and in the computer industry.

The first time in the late 1940s, Hurd recruited von Neumann to be a consultant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

“HURD: … One of my first conversations with him, would he become a consultant with Oak Ridge and we were working on a design of a gaseous fusion plant. There was a lot of numerical analysis what we would now call computing, and I thought and a colleague of mine, Dr. George Garrett, who was my boss, he’s a mathematician, thought that John Von Neumann would be useful, and when we told Alston Householder about this, Alston thought it would be a good idea to get John to become a consultant. John was already a government consultant, so I talked to him about this. He examined his schedule and after some period of months I guess, decided he would have time and the interest to become a consultant also at Oak Ridge so he became a consultant. But the first time he visited was after I had left.

…

STERN: Now, when he was a consultant for Oak Ridge was it a financial arrangement that he had with Oak Ridge or did he do this as part of his consulting with the government?

HURD: That’s it.

STERN: It was part of his consulting with the government?

HURD: That’s it.

STERN: And the expectation would be that he’d come down once a month, twice a month, what was the frequency?

HURD: I think he just came once for a preliminary visit and then it would be decided how often he came. I think he went once or twice. …

STERN: Well Oak Ridge did eventually build a IAS type computer.

HURD: Yes.”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

The Oak Ridge national lab had begun as the Clinton laboratories of the Clinton Engineer Works, the leading production site for nuclear bomb materials during the Manhattan Project.

(Bruce Cameron Reed, The History and Science of the Manhattan Project, 2014, Springer; and, “OAK RIDGE AND HANFORD COME THROUGH (Oak Ridge [Clinton] and Hanford, 1944-1945)”, The Manhattan Project, U.S. Department of Energy)

Nuclear materials production had not been a part of von Neumann’s Manhattan Project roles, which were in bomb design at the Los Alamos national lab, and in analyzing and selecting the bombing targets – including proposing the Japanese ancient capital of Kyoto as one.

(Kati Marton, The Great Escape: Nine Jews who Fled Hitler and Changed the World, 2006, Simon and Schuster; “The enduring legacy of John von Neumann”, by John Waelti, October 14, 2011, The Monroe Times; and, “IMPLOSION BECOMES A NECESSITY (Los Alamos: Laboratory, 1944)”, The Manhattan Project, U.S. Department of Energy)

After World War II, von Neumann had his focus on designing and advocating for the hydrogen bomb and for intercontinental ballistic missiles, as discussed in Part 5 (i).

But as Hurd explained, there was “a lot of numerical analysis”, i.e., computing, that von Neumann’s talents would be useful, von Neumann accepted Oak Ridge’s invitation, and Oak Ridge later built a von Neumann IAS-type computer – as a part of a von Neumann-led computer-building movement among the academia and the scientific institutions, reviewed in Part 5 (i).

As in the above quote, after recruiting von Neumann for consulting Hurd then left Oak Ridge before von Neumann began to attend the lab. As quoted earlier, Hurd moved to IBM in 1949 to found and direct its applied science department, and became a key driving force behind IBM’s first commercial computer, the IBM 701 “Defense Calculators” of the Korean War era.

The second time in the early 1950s, recruiting von Neumann to be a consultant for IBM, Hurd had an observation about von Neumann’s attitude toward money, that von Neumann was “interested in money” but it was not a primary reason for his doing consultant work, as Hurd later told:

“STERN: Bullom in the obituary you showed me, frequently talked about Von Neumann being interested in power, if you recall. Did you have any sense of that being the case?

HURD: No.

STERN: What do you think his reasons for consulting for IBM were?

STERN: Or just speculate?

HURD: I think he liked the opportunity to be with a group of bright people. He clearly enjoyed his consulting projects. He liked it. And there were some problems to be solved in IBM which were challenges which he could solve. For example we discussed the possibility of writing a simulator of the Endicott plant. And we decided it was silly. I think he was interested in money. I don’t think that was a primary reason but when we came to discuss the terms why he was clearly interested in what the honorarium would be. I think I remember at first he thought it was terribly high. I don’t know what Von Neumann thought later. I think he was also interested in having his ideas put into a practical application. I don’t think our association was a deterministic thing, because he and I could have seen each other [at times other] than when he consulted.”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

Both von Neumann and Aiken were interested in money. However, when von Neumann was told of the IBM honorarium figure for his consulting, he thought “it was terribly high”, whereas Aiken’s goal, reviewed earlier, was “to be rich”.

And when Hurd said he did not think his association with von Neumann was “a deterministic thing”, he probably suggested that the outcome of their interactions made them associate more.

In that same logic, was it, or was it not, “a deterministic thing” that Hurd’s interactions with Howard Aiken, which led to Hurd’s becoming cited as a “close associate” of Aiken’s, did not lead to their starting a business together even though he could do so and Aiken repeatedly expressed an interest?

I think the various anecdotes Hurd told that I have reviewed are surprisingly revealing of Hurd’s own inclination towards von Neumann, and partially explain why he twice succeeded in recruiting von Neumann to major scientific and technological consultancies, and yet twice failed to proceed with forming a company with Aiken to develop microcomputers and personal computers.

But there was something more specific linking Hurd’s recruiting of von Neumann for consultancies to his later discussions with Aiken about co-starting a company: in Bernard Cohen’s biography of Aiken, “Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer”, quoted earlier, Hurd was quoted as saying that Aiken was very close to George Garrett, Lockheed Missiles Company’s Director of Computer Activities; and in his interview with Nancy Stern quoted earlier, Hurd said that he and his Oak Ridge national lab colleague and boss George Garrett, a mathematician, decided to recruit von Neumann as a consultant.

The George Garrett at Oak Ridge and the one at Lockheed Missiles were in fact the same person, like Cuthbert Hurd a mathematician in the atomic energy field and then in the computing field, though in Garrett’s case at Lockheed Missiles he continued to be in a military arena:

“George A. Garrett, 84, a 21-year resident of Menlo Park, died May 21 after an illness of several months. Born in Sardis, Miss., he graduated from the University of Mississippi and received a doctorate in mathematics from Rice University in Houston. He began his career as the party chief of a seismographic crew, until World War II, when he worked as a civilian for the Navy at MIT, developing and testing airplane sonar. After the war, he worked in the burgeoning nuclear field at Oak Ridge, Tenn., where he developed peaceful uses for atomic energy and helped to design the nuclear power plant installed at Paducah, Ky. After years at Oak Ridge, he became director of information processing for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale. In 1977 he transferred to the position of senior scientist for Bechtel Corp. in San Francisco. …”

(“Deaths”, May 31, 1995, Palo Alto Online)

Now I can see that the two engaged in very specific activities in a human-resources sense: Hurd and Garrett together associated with von Neumann while in the atomic energy field, and then with Aiken in the computing field; first with von Neumann, Garrett no doubt worked with him at Oak Ridge on both nuclear energy and the computer built there following von Neumann’s design, while Hurd moved to IBM, where he recruited von Neumann for a second time; later with Aiken, Garrett most likely had a role in recruiting him to Lockheed Missiles in the fledgling Silicon Valley, while Hurd went there to discuss with Aiken, and their discussions and negotiations would determine whether Hurd, by now an established computer industry executive, would take the second step in Aiken’s case, i.e., to start a new computer company together.

Apparently Hurd did not take that second step with Aiken that he had taken with von Neumann.

Possibly due to disillusionment, Howard Aiken, as told in his February 1973 interview quoted earlier from Bernard Cohen’s biography of him, ended his consultancy with Lockheed that year and concentrated on consulting for Monsanto for the same goal of making computers small – unfortunately, and somewhat prophetically for something he had said in that interview, Aiken died in his pursue of the goal.

Cuthbert Hurd was of course not the only industry executive in the computer field Aiken was close to, Aiken’s former Mark I underling Richard Bloch being another, who at some point became general manager of Raytheon’s computer division as quoted earlier. But as the example of Louis Fein illustrates, in the computing field Raytheon was no match for IBM.

Given that Hurd had been IBM’s director of the Applied Science Department and then director of the Electronic Data Processing Machines Division, he had the full breath of management experiences in computer development and computer applications.

At IBM, Hurd had a lot of interactions with Thomas Watson father and son:

“HURD: … I was hired with some notion about helping IBM get in the computer field. It was vague. When I came in I talked to Mr. Watson Sr. who was the chairman, Mr. Phillips who was the president and Tom Watson Jr. who was executive vice president, the director of sales, the director of product planning and John McPherson who I guess was vice president of engineering. I talked to everybody, we all talked about this subject.”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

Loud arguments between Watson, Sr. and Watson, Jr. – the father against and the son for IBM computer development as first noted in Part 5 (i) – were often overheard by Hurd and other executives:

“STERN: … Now you’ve mentioned and I’ve read elsewhere, that in the late ’40s, Watson Jr. was really interested in getting into the computing field and Watson Sr. was not. Did you experience any kind of difference of opinion over this issue?

HURD: First let me say as I said earlier that I think, in 1949, Tom did not think specifically that IBM should get into the computer field, because the computer field was not defined. He used to talk about electronics. He talked about two things. He’d talk about electronics, and he’d talk about magnetic tape, and he understood instinctively that something had to be done with it, but we were all aware now–what do I mean by all? Half dozen people were aware– that there was a difference of opinion. Which would sometimes have a very strong expression between Mr. Watson Sr. and Mr. Watson Jr. The away we knew about this was, Mr. Watson Sr.’s on the seventeenth floor, Mr. Watson Jr.’s office was on the sixteenth floor. My office was on the fifteenth floor. We’d sometimes have meetings on the sixteenth floor, and Tom would disappear, and sometimes if somebody happened to go up or down, they never took the elevator. There was a stairway. You’d go outside Tom’s office, and in fifteen or twenty feet there was a door and it was a stairway, and it was not unusual to hear very loud voices.

STERN: [Laugh.]

HURD: And nobody ever said that you know explicitly that this is what this is going on. But everybody had the impression that these two gentlemen, who had very strong minds were disagreeing about something. …”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

As quoted earlier, after he left IBM for the chairmanship of the Computer Usage Company, Hurd continued to be a consultant for IBM. It was only logical because that independent company, founded in 1955, produced software for use on IBM computers.

(Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 2003, The MIT Press)

Hurd’s important responsibilities within IBM, and continuing close ties as a consultant to IBM afterwards, could in fact be a main reason why Aiken repeatedly discussed with him ideas of starting a new company to develop smaller computers. After all, from the very beginning it had been IBM that made Aiken’s Mark I project a reality.

As reviewed in details in Part 5 (i), major U.S. government funding support for science and technology was first jumpstarted by the considerations of military usage of the Second World War; the first general-purpose electronic computer ENIAC, with John von Neumann involved in a key development role, was made during that time for the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground; subsequently, IBM’s first commercial computer, the Model 701 Defense Calculator, with Cuthbert Hurd in a key development role, was made in response to the Korean War.

It was no exception for Aiken’s own invention, the Mark machines, which he had independently proposed to IBM in 1937 several years before World War II. Ultimately, they were all made for use for the U.S. military’s needs:

“The four large-scale calculators which Aiken developed were:

Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (the Harvard Mark I, known within IBM as the ASCC): conceived by Aiken in 1937, designed by IBM engineers and by Aiken, built by IBM as a gift to Harvard. The Mark I was used at Harvard by a US Navy crew that included Grace Murray Hopper and Richard Bloch. …

Mark II: Designed and built at Harvard for the Naval Proving Ground at Dahlgren, Va., for the development of ballistics tables. …

Mark III: Like Mark II, this machine was designed and built at Harvard for Dahlgren. …

Mark IV: Designed, built, and operated at Harvard for the US Air Force…”

(J. A. N. Lee, 1995, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.)

As for Aiken himself, the Harvard press release for Mark I’s dedication, discussed earlier, referred to Aiken as “Commander Howard H. Aiken” of the U.S. Navy Reserve; clearly the Navy, which made good use of the first two, non-electronic Mark machines, was a pride of Aiken and Harvard.

So for Howard Aiken, his consultancy at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, where he worked with George Garrett and had discussions with Cuthbert Hurd about starting a new company, was probably in his understanding a necessary military-affiliation ingredient for launching the new venture of his desire; with proposed technical help of some Lockheed engineering personnel as mentioned earlier, it could make him the “father” of a new generation of computers – an accolade that had eluded him in his Harvard Mark projects.

The U.S. Navy certainly prized its Harvard Mark machines association. Grace Murray Hopper, as cited above Richard Bloch’s colleague in the Navy team using Mark I, and another of Aiken’s Harvard underlings, eventually rose in the Nay to become a rear admiral, on the merits of her computer work leadership:

“Grace Brewster Murray was born on December 9, 1906 in New York City. In 1928 she graduated from Vassar College with a BA in mathematics and physics and joined the Vassar faculty. While an instructor at Vassar, she continued her studies in mathematics at Yale University, where she earned an MA in 1930 and a PhD in 1934. …

In 1930 Grace Murray married Vincent Foster Hopper. (He died in 1945 during World War II, and they had no children.) She remained at Vassar as an associate professor until 1943, when she joined the United States Naval Reserve to assist her country in its wartime challenges. … she was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she worked at Harvard’s Cruft Laboratories on the Mark series of computers. In 1946 Admiral Hopper resigned her leave of absence from Vassar to become a research fellow in engineering and applied physics at Harvard’s Computation Laboratory. In 1949 she joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation as a Senior Mathematician. This group was purchased by Remington Rand in 1950, which in turn merged into the Sperry Corporation in 1955. …

Throughout her years in academia and industry, Admiral Hopper was a consultant and lecturer for the United States Naval Reserve. After a seven-month retirement, she returned to active duty in the Navy in 1967 as a leader in the Naval Data Automation Command. Upon her retirement from the Navy in 1986 with the rank of Rear Admiral, she immediately became a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation, and remained there several years, working well into her eighties. She died in her sleep in Arlington, Virginia on January 1, 1992.”

(“Grace Murray Hopper”, 1994, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, as posted by Yale University Department of Computer Science)

Like her former Harvard mentor Howard Aiken, Grace Murray Hopper also died during sleep. But at 86 on New Year 1992, she enjoyed 13 more years of life than Aiken.

In Part 3 I have mentioned a women’s computing conference in October 2014 that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was invited to attend and there Maria Klawe disagreed with something he said; the annual conference, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, is named in honor of Grace Murray Hopper.

(“About”, Anita Borg Institute Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing)

Subtly different, Cuthbert Hurd, whom Aiken counted on for co-launching a computer industry venture, had a U.S. Coast Guard Academy working background from World War II:

“HURD: I started mathematics with a Ph.D. [from] the University of Illinois, 1936. Dissertation concerned asymptotic solutions of differential equations. Taught at Michigan State College, now Michigan State University, until the war. And organized and staffed department for reserve officers of The Coast Guard Academy, and was educational officer for the academy, helped the admiral revise the curriculum, and was briefly dean of Allegheny College, joined the Oak Ridge Project in nuclear energy. In 1947 was a Technical Research Head. Did work which involved dealing with lots of data. Felt we needed something more, became acquainted with IBM. Called on Mr. Watson Sr. told him I wanted to work for IBM. Joined IBM, organized the Applied Science department. Got IBM’s first computer announced in about a year and a half.”

(Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota)

As described, at the Coast Guard Academy Hurd was an organizer of reserve officers, and an educational officer, helping the admiral revise the curriculum.

Hmm, once helping always helping the admiral revise ‘The Coast Guard Academy curriculum’, so to speak, now I begin to wonder: might it not be Hurd’s closer empathy for von Neumann than for Aiken, but a more subtle form of institutional bias that prevented Hurd from helping Aiken’s ambition of developing and commercializing a new generation of computers?

More specifically, prior to his Oak Ridge career Hurd’s interests had all been in education: college teaching and research, personnel education and administration during World War II at the Coast Guard Academy, and academic administration as a college dean; then at Oak Ridge national lab, Hurd began managing technical research.

Hurd’s starting role at IBM, founding director of the applied science department, was thus likely offered to him because of his prior long career in administering education and scientific research.

After IBM, the independent computer software company Hurd became the board chair of, the Computer Usage Company, emphasized “usage” of computers, in fact IBM computers as mentioned earlier.

Even later, Hurd became board chairman of a company specializing in “educational software”:

“… He was later appointed chairman of the Picodyne Corporation, which specialized in educational software, and in 1984 he co-founded Quintus Computer Systems, which was devoted to the commercialization of artificial intelligence. At the time of his death, he was the chief scientist of Northpoint Software Ventures Inc., a developer of risk management software.”

(Laurence Zuckerman, June 2, 1996, The New York Times)

Hence, my metaphor of Cuthbert Hurd always helping the admiral revise the curriculum, includes about some detected disdain, tinted by Hurd’s educational institutional perspective albeit perhaps not as decidedly biased as Al Bowker’s lifelong academic perspective, toward the business passion and acumen of Howard Aiken, a retired Harvard professor – as a result Hurd talked about but never took a real step toward forming a computer company with Aiken.

John von Neumann, stricken with cancer in his early 50s, wanted to move to California to engage in “research on the computer and its possible future uses, with considerable commercial sponsorship”; but did not have life left to do so as detailed in my review in Part 5 (i).

Howard Aiken, von Neumann’s academic computer-pioneer rival, lived two decades longer, retired from the academia, started a businessman career, and became a computer consultant in California’s growing Silicon Valley for over a decade, at Lockheed Missiles and Space company; but despite his repeatedly expressed wishes, with technological ideas proposed, to start a company to develop smaller computers, the promise he was given in return was never fulfilled.

Finally Aiken gave up on Lockheed and Silicon Valley, pinning his hope on Monsanto’s computer technology ambition; but sadly, he immediately met his end.

What consoled Howard Aiken, undoubtedly, was that within a short 3 years of his early retirement from Harvard, Alfred Brooks, one of his “most devoted disciples” as referred to earlier, made significant achievements as the development team leader of a revolutionarily important and successful IBM commercial computer, and became the founding chairman of the second academic computer science department in the U.S.

Decades after Aiken’s death, in 1999 Brooks received computer science’s highest honor, the A. M. Turing Award, an honor in my opinion Howard Aiken very much deserved and should have been given – had not been for his career conversion to a businessman.

Since founding the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s computer science department, Brooks’s research has specialised in computer graphics:

“After the successful delivery of the System/360 and its operating system, Brooks was invited to the University of North Carolina, where he founded the University’s computer science department in 1964. He chaired the department from 1964 to 1984, and served as the Kenan Professor of Computer Science. His principal research area, real-time three-dimensional graphics, provides virtual environments that let biochemists reason about the structure of complex molecules, and let architects walk through buildings under design. Brooks has also pioneered the use of a haptic force feedback display to supplement visual graphics.”

(“FREDERICK (“FRED”) BROOKS”, A. M. Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery)

As discussed in Part 3, Chapel Hill’s computer science department was where Jack Snoeyink moved to in 2000, from the University of British Columbia, who had a Stanford computer science Ph.D. with specialisation in computer graphics and whose 1990 hiring by the UBC computer science department had ended my hope for a UBC tenure-track faculty position.

I note that Snoeyink became Brooks’s colleague the year after Brooks’s winning of the Turing Award.

As also reviewed in Part 3, graduating from Stanford Snoeyink was recruited by UBC computer graphics professor Alain Fournier, who had taught courses at Stanford and been acquainted with Snoeyink’s Ph.D. adviser Leonidas Guibas; later to Chapel Hill Snoeyink became a colleague of Henry Fuchs, a senior professor in computer graphics who had been on the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas in the mid-late 1970s when Fournier was a Ph.D. student there, interested in specializing under Fuchs before Fuchs’s departure for Chapel Hill.

Clearly, UNC Chapel Hill’s computer science leader Alfred Brooks recognized talents like Henry Fuchs and Jack Snoeyink.

But mindful of Brooks being a former devoted disciple of Howard Aiken, and mindful of a computer-pioneer rivalry between Aiken and John von Neumann, I note that back in the Manhattan Project era von Neumann had had an important collaborator also by the name of Fuchs, Klaus Fuchs, in pioneering design of the hydrogen bomb, who turned out to be a spy handing U.S. nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union:

“Fuchs, the Quaker son of a Lutheran pastor, was born in Russelsheim, Germany in 1911. He attended both Leipzig and Kiel Universities but, as a Communist, was persecuted by the Nazis. He fled through Switzerland and France to Britain, where he attended in succession Bristol and then Edinburgh Universities. In 1940 he was taken into custody as a German ‘enemy alien’ and shipped off to an internment camp in Quebec, Canada.

In 1941, with the help of his old professor at Edinburgh, Max Born (himself a Jewish refugee from Germany) he was back in Britain — and in 1942 he obtained a job with the ‘Tube Alloys’ project (code name for the British atomic research programme).

He was naturalised British in 1942 and, ironically, he signed the Official Secrets Act at about the same time as he started meeting ‘the girl from Banbury’, really Ruth Werner, a German communist working for the Soviets. …

In late 1943, he was transferred to New York to work on the US atomic bomb programmme at Columbia University; then, in the summer of the following year, he started work at the Theoretical Physics Division on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico … Together with John von Neumann he filed a patent, far ahead of its time, for initiating fusion and implosion in an H-bomb.

In 1947, he became the first head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, which had been set up at the instigation of Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (1886-1957), Churchill’s scientific adviser …

While at Harwell, Fuchs met Soviet agent Alexander Feklisov (1914-2007) at least twice… On the first occasion, he gave top-secret information about the American super H-bomb and how scientists Fermi and Teller had proved its workability. On the second, he gave away secrets which… “played an exceptional role in the subsequent course of the Soviet thermonuclear programme”.

(“Harwell head gave away H-bomb secrets”, by Chris Koenig, March 9, 2011, Oxford Times)

So I wonder if Professor Alfred Brooks was intrigued not only by Professor Henry Fuchs’s talents but also by the Fuchs name when he hired the latter, who is today the Federico Gil Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UNC Chapel Hill.

(“Henry Fuchs: Federico Gil Distinguished Professor”, Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

In any case, per his Turing Award biography, in his IBM days Brooks had participated in developing a computer for the NSA, and helping the U.S. government assess the computing capability of the Soviet Union, and so he had his nerves.

Alain Fournier did not get to become Henry Fuchs’s Ph.D. student in Dallas, but decades later Jack Snoeyink he mentored became Fuchs’s faculty colleague at Chapel Hill, and so an intention was realized by one of a younger generation.

Despite Jack’s role in UBC academic politics to my detriment, mentioned in a quote in Part 1, it is still fitting that a Ph.D. from the most influential academic computer science department in the U.S. founded by the late George Forsythe, “almost … the Martin Luther of the Computer Reformation”, became a professor in the U.S.’s second academic computer science department founded ahead of Stanford’s, and in the same computer graphics field as that department’s founder Alfred Brooks.

Snoeyink went to Chapel Hill in the same year 2000 when Fournier died of cancer, as in Part 3. Fournier was 56 – only a year older than George Forsythe at his death decades earlier.

(“Alain Fournier, a life in pictures”, Pierre Poulin, Département d’informatique et de recherche opérationnelle, Université de Montréal)

Then in the same year 2015 when Brooks retired after 51 years at UNC, Snoeyink became a program director in the U.S. National Science Foundation as noted in Part 3 – I can only hope that this is an indication of progress.

(Part 5 continues in (iii))

A review of postings about scientific integrity and intellectual honesty, with observations regarding elite centrism – Part 5: inventions, innovations, and ushering of ‘the new normal’ (i)

(Continued from Part 4)

The electronic computer ranks among the foremost in the history of scientific and technological innovations. The mathematician John von Neumann, who played important roles in World War II U.S. military science projects, is often regarded as the “father of computers” for his key participation in the development of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, the University of Pennsylvania, and his subsequent leading role in spreading the development of computers:

“The Moore School signed a research contract with the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) of the U.S. Army, and in an August 1942 memorandum Mauchly proposed that the school build a high-speed calculator out of vacuum tube technology for the war effort. In 1943, the army granted funds to build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) to create artillery ballistic tables. Eckert served as chief engineer of a team of fifty engineers and technical staff on the ENIAC project.

Completed in 1945, the ENIAC consisted of 49-foot-high cabinets, almost 18,000 vacuum tubes, and many miles of wiring, and weighed 30 tons. …

… While building the ENIAC, Mauchly and Eckert developed the idea of the stored program for their next computer project, where data and program code resided together in memory. The concept allowed computers to be programmed dynamically so that the actual electronics or plugboards did not have to be changed with every program.

… During World War II, von Neumann worked on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb and also lent his wide expertise as a consultant on other defense projects.

After becoming involved in the ENIAC project, von Neumann expanded on the concept of stored programs and laid the theoretical foundations of all modern computers in a 1945 report and through later work. His ideas came to be known as the “von Neumann Architecture,”, and von Neumann is often called the “father of computers.” … After the war, von Neumann went back to Princeton and persuaded the Institute for Advanced Study to build their own pioneering digital computer, the IAS (derived from the initials of the institute), which he designed.

…

Eckert and Mauchly deserve equal credit with von Neumann for their innovations, though von Neumann’s elaboration of their initial ideas and his considerable prestige lent credibility to the budding movement to build electronic computers. …”

(Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro, Computers: The Life Story of a Technology, 2005, The Johns Hopkins University Press)

In a February 2013 blog post, I wondered about the prospect in the mid-1950s that von Neumann, then stricken with cancer, was to move from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, to the University of California; “I bet it was my alma mater UC Berkeley”, I marvelled at how much his coming would have been a boost to Berkeley’s science and the nascent Silicon Valley’s technology:

“In any case, it was a pity for the University of California that John von Neumann died at his prime age, as before his death he had decided to resign from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and move to one of the UC campuses, as also revealed in the book quoted about him:

“When Johnny was in hospital in 1956, with what proved to be his terminal cancer, he wrote to Oppenheimer and explained, although not yet for publication, that he was not in fact going to come back to the IAS. He had privately accepted an offer to be professor at large at the University of California: he would live near one of its campuses (it had not been quite decided which) and proceed with research on the computer and its possible future uses, with considerable commercial sponsorship. We cannot know how much he would then have enriched our lives, with cellular automata, with totally new lines for the computer, with new sorts of mathematics.”

I bet it was my alma mater UC Berkeley John von Neumann was about to move to, given its close collaborations with several National Labs that had nuclear science and weapons researches, and its proximity to what would become Silicon Valley around Stanford University across the Bay as discussed in Part 1.

The scientific and technological history of the Bay Area would have looked very different, so much more – had “Johnny” come to his senses earlier, I sigh.”

(“Guinevere and Lancelot – a metaphor of comedy or tragedy, without Shakespeare but with shocking ends to wonderful lives (Part 2)”, February 28, 2013, Feng Gao’s Posts – Rites of Spring)

What I quoted from in the above was Norman MacRae’s book, John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More, originally published in 1992.

Von Neumann soon died, and his intended move has left room for imagination since the University of California had several major campuses and “it had not been quite decided which” according to MacRae.

My educated guess of UC Berkeley was based on the close relations Berkeley had with the nearby national laboratories – the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Lawrence Livermore National Lab discussed in Part 4 – in nuclear science and weapons research, of top interest to von Neumann.

For instance, in his involvement in the development of the hydrogen bomb, von Neumann had spent time at the Livermore lab with the physicist Edward Teller, Cold War strategist Herman Khan, and others:

“Herman Kahn … went to U.C.L.A. and majored in physics. During the war, he served in the Pacific theatre in a non-combat position, then finished his B.S. and entered a Ph.D. program at Cal Tech. He failed to graduate… went to work at rand. He became involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb, and commuted to the Livermore Laboratory, near Berkeley, where he worked with Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Hans Bethe.”

(“Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the nuclear age”, by Louis Menand, June 27, 2005, The New Yorker)

On the other hand, UCLA has claimed that von Neumann had planned to move there, before his premature death in February 1957, because of his close association with a computer project at RAND Corporation in Santa Monica in the Los Angeles region:

“1950_____________________________________

At RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, a project to build a von Neumann type machine was closely tracking the ongoing development t the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (von Neumann often came West to consult at RAND and, in fit, his plan to relocate to UCLA was aborted by his death in February 1957).”

(“THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING & COMPUTER SCIENCE AT UCLA”, by Gerald Estrin, Computer Science Department, UCLA Engineering)

As cited, the RAND computer project closely followed von Neumann’s computer design at the IAS in Princeton.

RAND was the Cold War think-tank from which John Nash, whose Princeton Ph.D. thesis idea in game theory had once been dismissed by von Neumann, was expelled in 1954 due to a police arrest for homosexual activity in a public restroom, here with more details than a previous quote in Part 2:

“That August… He spent hours at a time walking on the sand or long the promenade in Palisade Park, watching the bodybuilders on Muscle Beach…

One morning at the very end of the month, the head of RAND’s security detail got a call from the Santa Monica police station, which, as it happened, wasn’t far from RAND’s new headquarters on the far side of Main. It seemed that two cops in vice, one decoy and one arresting officer named John Otto Mattson, had picked up a young guy in a men’s bathroom in Palisades Park in the very early morning. … The man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, claimed that he was a mathematician employed by RAND. Was he?

…

… Nash had a top-secret security clearance. He’d been picked up in a “police trap.” …

…

Nash was not the first RAND employee to be caught in one of the Santa Monica police traps. Muscle Beach, between the Santa Monica pier and the little beach community of Venice, was a magnet for bodybuilders and the biggest homosexual pickup scene in the Malibu Bay area. …”

(Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind, 1998, Simon & Schuster)

Unlike John Nash, a libidinous young gay man incessantly roaming public beaches and parks and thus a misfit for RAND’s security sensitivity, John von Neumann was a leading Cold War brain of the think-tank, alongside Herman Khan:

“… RAND is a civilian think tank … described by Fortune in 1951 as “the Air Force’s big-brain-buying venture”, where brilliant academics pondered nuclear war and the new theory of games. …

…

Nothing like the RAND of the early 1950s has existed before or since. It was the original think tank, a strange hybrid of which the unique mission was to apply rational analysis and the latest quantitative methods to the problem of how to use the terrifying new nuclear weaponry to forestall war with Russia – or to win a war if deterrence failed. The people of RAND were there to think the unthinkable, in Herman Kahn’s famous phrase. … And Kahn and von Neumann, RAND’s most celebrated thinkers, were among the alleged models for Dr. Strangelove. … RAND had its roots in World War II, when the American military, for the first time in its history, had recruited legions of scientists, mathematicians, and economists and used them to help win the war. …”

(Sylvia Nasar, 1998, Simon & Schuster)

Beyond RAND or Livermore, von Neumann’s advocacy for the use of nuclear weapons was famous, rare among scientists, and framed in the mindset of “world government” – as in Part 2 a political ideal Nash was also drawn to and attempted to campaign for:

“After the Axis had been destroyed, Von Neumann urged that the U.S. immediately build even more powerful atomic weapons and use them before the Soviets could develop nuclear weapons of their own. It was not an emotional crusade, Von Neumann, like others, had coldly reasoned that the world had grown too small to permit nations to conduct their affairs independently of one another. He held that world government was inevitable—and the sooner the better. But he also believed it could never be established while Soviet Communism dominated half of the globe. A famous Von Neumann observation at that time: “With the Russians it is not a question of whether but when.” A hard-boiled strategist, he was one of the few scientists to advocate preventive war, and in 1950 he was remarking, “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not 1 o’clock?”

(“Passing of a Great Mind: John von Neumann, a Brilliant, Jovial Mathematician, Was a Prodigious Servant of Science and His Country”, by Clay Blair, Jr., February 25, 1957, Volume 42, Number 8, Life)

So for von Neumann, world government needed to be achieved through war, even nuclear war, rather than through the kind of peace movement Nash wished for but failed to start.

Von Neumann’s contributions as a military technology consultant and a Cold War adviser were immense:

“His fellow scientists… knew that during World War II at Los Alamos Von Neumann’s development of the idea of implosion speeded up the making of the atomic bomb by at least a full year. His later work with electronic computers quickened U.S. development of the H.bomb by months. The chief designer of the H-bomb, Physicist Edward Teller, once said with wry humor that Von Neumann was “one of those rare mathematicians who could descend to the level of the physicists.” …

… The principal adviser to the U.S. Air Force on nuclear weapons, Von Neumann was the most influential scientific force behind the U.S. decision to embark on accelerated production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. …”

(Clay Blair, Jr., February 25, 1957, Volume 42, Number 8, Life)

Without von Neumann’s ambitious push, the United States would have fallen behind the Soviet Union in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), namely long-range strategic nuclear missiles:

“In the early 1950s, the champion of strategic bombers in the United States was the famous, truculent, imperious Gen. Curtis LeMay, the chief of the Strategic Air Command, who, during the last months of World War II, had tried to break Japan’s will and avert the necessity of an American invasion by dropping 150,000 tons of firebombs on Japanese cities. …

…

In the Pentagon of the 1950s, LeMay was “king of the mountain,” as one colleague put it, known for pulverizing those few men who tried to stand in his way. …

Lacking LeMay’s blinders, Bennie Schriever realized that the Soviets planned to rest their future defense not on bombers but on intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States with only 15 minutes of advance warning. The Kremlin was also fast improving batteries of surface-to-air missiles that could knock LeMay’s beloved bombers out of the sky. …

Schriever’s new way of thinking began in 1953, when he was still a colonel. During a briefing on intermediate-range bombers at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, he had a fateful conversation with the legendary refugee scientists Edward Teller and John von Neumann. They predicted that by 1960, the United States would be creating hydrogen bombs so lightweight that missiles could carry them. The following year, Schriever, by then a general, was asked to supervise, on highest priority, the creation of some kind of ICBM force. …”

(“Missile Defense”, by Michael Beschloss, October 1, 2009, The New York Times)

But as discussed earlier, in hospital for cancer treatment in 1956 von Neumann expressed the wish to move to California to conduct computer research.

The computer developed at RAND in association with von Neumann was name JOHNNIAC in honor of him, and was one of the most utilized computers of that early generation:

“JOHNNIAC (circa 1952-1966)

The JOHNNIAC (John von Neumann Integrator and Automatic Computer) was a product of the RAND Corporation. It was yet another machine based on the Princeton Institute IAS architecture. The JOHNNIAC was named in von Neumann’s honor, although it seems that von Neumann disapproved. JOHNNIAC is arguably the longest-lived of the early computers. It was in use almost continuously from the end of the Korean War, until finally shut down on 11 February 1966 after logging over 50,000 operational hours. After two “rescues” from the scrap heap, the machine currently resides at the Computer History Museum.”

(Marshall William McMurran, ACHIEVING ACCURACY: A Legacy of Computers and Missiles, 2008, Xlibris Corporation)

UCLA’s claim that it and RAND were von Neumann’s choice in 1956 is thus consistent with MacRae’s account of von Neumann’s wish, that he wanted to concentrate on “research on the computer and its possible future uses, with considerable commercial sponsorship” – von Neumann’s prior association with RAND and JOHNNIAC made it more likely for UCLA rather than UC Berkeley to be his choice.

In that vein I would guess anew, that with von Neumann’s guidance RAND could have started a ‘Computer Beach’ at Santa Monica. It could resemble the Silicon Valley’s start in a Palo Alto garage by the Hewlett-Packard Company’s founders under the mentorship of Frederick Terman, their Stanford University professor:

“The Rise of Silicon Valley

In 1939, with the encouragement of their professor and mentor, Frederick Terman, Stanford alumni David Packard and William Hewlett established a little electronics company in a Palo Alto garage. That garage would later be dubbed “the Birthplace of Silicon Valley.””

(“History of Stanford”, Stanford University)

There would have been plenty of time to build a computer industry for von Neumann and RAND, as RAND was much more than a garage and Hewlett-Packard’s first computer would come out only 10 years later in 1966 – the year of JOHNNIAC’s retirement.

(“Hewlett-Packard”, 2008, Silicon Valley Historical Association)

My imagined Computer Beach versus the nascent Silicon Valley would have been one scenario, while UCLA versus UC Berkeley was another factor von Neumann likely considered.

Stricken with cancer, von Neumann likely came to think of his involvement in the atomic bomb development as an occupational hazard, as I discussed in my February 2013 blog post, again quoting from MacRae:

“After his intimate participations in advanced military researches during World War II and afterwards, including in the development of the nuclear bomb, John von Neumann died of cancer in 1957 at only 53, and there has been a question whether his premature death had been work-related:

“It is plausible that in 1955 the then-fifty-one-year-old Johnny’s cancer sprang from his attendance at the 1946 Bikini nuclear tests. The safety precautions at Bikini were based on calculations that were meant to keep any observer’s exposure to radiation well below what had given Japanese at Hiroshima even a 1 percent extra risk of cancer. But Johnny, like some other great scientists, underestimated risks at that time. He was startled when radiation probably caused the cancer and death in 1954 at age fifty-three of his great friend Fermi, whose 1930s experiments with nuclear bombardment in Italy were not accompanied by proper precautions. Soon after a Soviet nuclear test in 1953 Sakharov and Vyacheslav Malyshev walked near the site to assess its results. Sakharov ascribed Malyshev’s death from leukemia in 1954, and possibly his own terminal illness thirty-five years later, to that walk.”

So von Neumann and some other great scientists in the nuclear bomb development may have “underestimated” the health risks, and he and Enrico Fermi who had discovered nuclear reaction, both died at the age of 53.

Hmm, I doubt that a mathematician of von Neumann’s caliber would have incorrectly calculated the cancer risks from radiation.”

(February 28, 2013, Feng Gao’s Posts – Rites of Spring)

I doubted in that blog post, and still do, that a mathematician and scientist of John von Neumann’s caliber would have underestimated his risk of getting cancer from nuclear radiation. But the facts remain that both von Neumann and Enrico Fermi, whose discovery of nuclear reaction made the atomic bomb possible, died of cancer at the same age of 53.

Moreover, as I noted in that blog post, previously quoted in Part 4, that former UC Berkeley physicist Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the atomic bomb development and director of the IAS to whom von Neumann expressed the wish to move to UC, later also died of cancer – 10 years older at the age of 63:

“The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the director of IAS at Princeton with whom von Neumann discussed his pending move in 1956, had hailed from UC Berkeley to become “father of the atomic bomb”, leading the development of nuclear bombs at Los Alamos National Lab founded by him in northern New Mexico; Oppenheimer later also died of cancer, at the age of 63.”

(February 28, 2013, Feng Gao’s Posts – Rites of Spring)

So it is possible that in 1956 cancer prompted von Neumann’s final decision that would be to stay away from UC Berkeley and the nearby nuclear labs.

But von Neumann was also a professor of mathematics, at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and, if he had moved to California, at UCLA or UC Berkeley, the two oldest primary UC campuses as in Part 4. The academic factors could also sway his decision.

At UCLA there was a computer, SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer), developed at the Institute for Numerical Analysis sponsored by the National Bureau of Standards and funded by the Office of Naval Research:

“1947____________________________________________

The Institute for Numerical Analysis was set up on the UCLA campus under sponsorship of the National Bureau of Standards and with funding from the Office of Naval Research. The primary function of INA was “to conduct research and training in the types of mathematics pertinent to the efficient exploitation and further development of high-speed automatic digital computing machinery.” INA attracted a stream of internationally recognized applied mathematicians. Harry Huskey completed the SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer) development project in 1950, and it became one of the very few places where modern numerical experiments could be conducted. The SWAC provided a testing ground for computer engineers, programmers and applied mathematicians. …”

(Gerald Estrin, Computer Science Department, UCLA Engineering)

As quoted, upon its 1950 completion the SWAC computer at UCLA became “one of the very few places where modern numerical experiments could be conducted”.

The National Bureau of Standards wanted computers for practical needs, and so SWAC and its Eastern sibling SEAC were quickly built, completed even before von Neumann’s IAS computer in Princeton:

“The SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) and the SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer) were built by the National Bureau of Standards in Washington and Los Angeles respectively. Both of these computers were designed to be completed rapidly in order to satisfy the computing needs of the National Bureau of Standards until either the IAS machine or the UNIVAC was completed. … In May of 1950 the SEAC became the first post-ENIAC American computer to be fully operational. … SWAC was completed by July 1950…”

(Louis A. Girifalco, Dynamics of Technological Change, 1991, Van Nostrand Reinhold)

Von Neumann, on the other hand, was the leader of a larger computer-building movement at universities and scientific institutions in the U.S. and internationally, distributing his computer design plans far and wide:

“At Cambridge, computer development was led by Maurice Wilkes, who constituted the staff of the “University Mathematical Laboratory,” which was founded in 1937 to tend the university’s Differential Analyzer. In May of 1946, Wilkes read von Neumann’s “First Draft on the EDVAC,” which he obtained from L. J. Comrie who had just visited the United States. Wilkes was invited to the Moore School 1946 summer lectures and returned home determined to build an electronic computer. … He called his machine the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator). …

EDSAC also led to the first computer to be used for commercial data processing. …

In spite of these great achievements, the future course of digital computers was largely determined in the United States. The machines built immediately after the ENIAC that set this course were the EDVAC (1952), the IAS machine of von Neumann (1951), the SEAC (1950) and SWAC (1950) of the Bureau of Standards, the REA 1101 (1950), the UNIVAC (1951), and Whirlwind (1951). Although the EDVAC was the last of this group to become operational, its design was well known and had a profound influence on all post-ENIAC machines, as has been already noted.

The Institute for Advanced Study machine was funded by the Army through the efforts of von Neumann and Goldstine. Von Neumann’s great prestige and widespread contacts ensured that the IAS machine would be widely used. In fact, von Neumann’s original plan was to distribute design plans to a number of institutions as they were developed so that the other organizations could rapidly build copies. A number of copies, with some alterations and improvements, were actually built at various institutions, including the Rand Corporation, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois. All of these were paid for by the United States government. Von Neumann’s machines were not limited to the United States. Several versions were built abroad, including the SILLIAC in Australia.”

(Louis A. Girifalco, 1991, Van Nostrand Reinhold)

The Institute for Advanced Study’s list of historical computers influenced by von Neumann is longer and includes international ones such as in Stockholm, Moscow, Munich and Sydney:

“Differences over individual contributions and patents divided the group at the Moore School. In keeping with the spirit of academic enquiry, von Neumann was determined that advances be kept in the public domain. ECP progress reports were widely disseminated. As a consequence, the project had widespread influence. Copies of the IAS machine appeared nationally: AVIDAC at Argonne National Laboratory; ILLIAC at the University of Illinois; JOHNNIAC at RAND Corporation; MANIAC at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory; ORACLE at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; ORDVAC at Aberdeen Proving Grounds; and internationally: BESK in Stockholm; BESM in Moscow; DASK in Denmark; PERM in Munich; SILLIAC in Sydney; and WEIZAC in Rehovoth, to mention a few. …”

(“Electronic Computer Project”, Institute for Advanced Study)

In the lists in the above two quotes, the U.S. institutions building computers, many following von Neumann’s design, included National Bureau of Standards’ SWAC at UCLA, RAND’s JOHNNIAC, and MANIAC at the Los Alamos national lab, but none at UC Berkeley or the nearby Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national labs.

With UCLA having a computer built by the National Bureau of Standards, wasn’t UC Berkeley in an obviously inferior position when von Neumann cast his eyes on moving to the University of California to focus on computer research and development?

Yes and no.

UC Berkeley was building CALDIC, the first computer built in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California and the first by a university on the West Coast, although compared to those in the Los Angeles region it was a modest one, credited mostly for educational training and completed only in 1954:

“In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the nascent West Coast computer industry was concentrated in Los Angeles. A number of Southern California aerospace firms received military funding to develop computers, many of which were meant to support aircraft design and research (Eckdahl, Reed, and Sarkissian, 2003; Norberg, 1976). The CALDIC (California Digital Computer) built at UC Berkeley in 1954 was the first computer developed in the Bay Area and the first computer developed at a West Coast university. Supported by the Office of Naval Research, in 1948 Professors Paul Morton (EE), Leland Cunningham (astronomy), and Richard Lehmer (mathematics) began building the CALDIC, which was meant to be an intermediate-size computer (Hoagland, 2010: 15). Like many university-developed computers during this period, the CALDIC was not commercialized, nor were any patents issued on the results of the work. Instead, the project’s main contribution to the local economy was the graduate students supported by the project, several of whom later became industry leaders.

…

For example, Albert Hoagland, Roy Houg, and Louis Stevens worked on CALDIC’s magnetic data storage system and on graduation joined the newly formed IBM research laboratory that had been established in San Jose in 1956 (Flamm, 1988: 20ff). … IBM’s San Jose Laboratory soon became a global center for digital magnetic storage innovation. … Another CALDIC PhD student, Douglas Engelbart, went to the Stanford Research Institute and developed some of the cornerstones of personal computing such as the mouse, “windowed” user interfaces, and hypertext (Bardini, 2000). Students trained through the CALDIC project thus emerged as leading industrial researchers in the Bay Area computer industry of the 1960s.”

(Martin Kenney and David C. Mowery, eds., Public Universities and Regional Growth: Insights from the University of California, 2014, Stanford Business Books)

But according to Douglas Engelbart, cited above as the a Berkeley Ph.D. student in the CALDIC project, that computer wasn’t really completed at the time of his Ph.D. graduation in 1955, Berkeley wasn’t receptive to a creative pioneer like him on its faculty, and he soon left:

“… After completing his B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1948, he settled contentedly on the San Francisco peninsula as an electrical engineer at NACA Ames Laboratory (forerunner of NASA).

…

He began to envision people sitting in front of cathode-ray-tube displays, “flying around” in an information space where they could formulate and portray their thoughts in ways that could better harness their sensory, perceptual and cognitive capabilities which had heretofore gone untapped. And they would communicate and collectively organize their ideas with incredible speed and flexibility. So he applied to the graduate program in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and off he went to launch his crusade. At that time, there was no computer science department and the closest working computer was probably on the eastern side of the country, with MIT’s Project Whirlwind. Berkeley did have a serious R&D program developing a general-purpose digital computer, the CalDiC, but remained unfishined throughout his time there.

He obtained his Ph.D. in 1955, along with a half dozen patents in “bi-stable gaseous plasma digital devices,” and stayed on at Berkeley as an acting assistant professor. Within a year, however, he was tipped off by a colleague that if he kept talking about his “wild ideas” he’d be an acting assistant professor forever. So he ventured back down into what is now Silicon Valley, in search of more suitable employment.

…

He settled on a research position at Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International, in 1957. …”

(“A Lifetime Pursuit”, by Christina Engelbart, Doug Engelbart Institute)

Before settling on a career at Stanford Research Institute beginning in 1957, Engelbart also approached both Stanford University and Hewlett-Packard – where the future Silicon Valley had begun – and learned that neither had plans for computer development:

“Were you working with computers at Ames in 1951?

No! The closest computer was somewhere on the east coast.

I left Ames to attend the University of California and received a Ph.D., and taught there for a year. …

So I contacted the Dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford, just across the bay from Berkeley, and received a nice letter that said something like, “Dear Dr. Engelbart. Thank you for your interest in Stanford. Unfortunately, our School of Engineering is a small department, and we have chosen to focus only on those areas which we feel offer real potential. Since computers are only useful to service entities, we have no interest in developing a focus in them. Best of luck, etc.”

Wow – I can’t believe they were so myopic! It’s hard to believe that an institution so closely allied with the birth of Silicon Valley could have missed that one…

They weren’t alone! I also spoke with David Packard (of Hewlett-Packard). We had a great conversation, and I was all set to work for them. Then, as I was driving home from the interview, a question forced its way into my mind. About a quarter of the way home, I stopped and called the vice president of engineering at HP I was going to work for, and asked, “I assume HP is planning on going into digital instruments and digital computers, and I’ll get a chance to work in those areas, right?” And he replied that they didn’t think there was much potential there, so the answer was no.”

(“Doug Engelbart: Father of the Mouse”, by Andrew Maisel, editor-in-chief, SuperKids Educational Software Review)

Engelbart’s early experiences of discouragement were a remarkable contrast to his subsequent pioneering work and achievements, which later in 1997 won him the A. M. Turing Award – computer science’s highest honor as mentioned in Part 3:

“… He is not a computer scientist, but an engineer by training and an inventor by choice. His numerous technological innovations (including the computer mouse, hypertext, and the split screen interface) were crucial to the development of personal computing and the Internet. …”

(“DOUGLAS ENGELBART”, A. M. Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery)

Amazing, an engineer with pioneering ideas for computers was ignored by the fledgling Silicon Valley’s leading engineering centers, Hewlett-Packard, Stanford and Berkeley, but went on to success, receiving the computer science community’s top honor.

During that 1950s in Southern California, including Los Angeles, the military-oriented aerospace technology companies were very active in computer research, receiving substantial funding from the U.S. military:

“One other pocket of activity, in historical hindsight, looms in importance as a transporter of computer technology from laboratory to market. Located on the West Coast of the United States and tied closely to the aerospace industry in Southern California, which, in turn, was very dependent on government contracts, this activity focused on scientific and engineering computing. The design of aircraft inherently required extensive mathematical calculations, as did applications such as missile guidance. Early efforts (late 1940s) were primarily housed at Northrop Aircraft and to a lesser extent at Raytheon. Both had projects funded by the U.S. government: Northrop for its Snark missile and Raytheon for a naval control processor, for example. Northrop worked with an instrument supplier (Hewlett-Packard) on early digital projects. Then, in 1950, a group of Northrop engineers formed their own computer company called Computer Research Corporation (CRC). Like ERA, it had a military sponsor the U.S. Air Force for which it built various computers in the first half of the 1950s.”

(James W. Cortada, The Computer in the United States: From Laboratory to Market, 1930 to 1960, 1993, M.E. Sharpe)

As quoted, while Southern California’s aerospace companies were building computers, Northern California’s Hewlett-Packard was only “an instrument supplier” for some of them.

In fact, when the future leading computer maker IBM first entered the electronic computer market in the early 1950s with its IBM 701 machine, there were very few buyers and half of them were companies and organizations using the SWAC computer at INA at UCLA:

“By 1951 the demands for computational assistance were so great that it was difficult for the Computational Unit to fulfill its obligations. Accordingly, a new unit of INA, called the Mathematical Services Unit, was formed under the supervision of Harry Huskey. It was funded by the United States Air Force. One of the purposes of this unit was to encourage Federal Government contractors to learn how to use electronic computers. Accordingly, computational services using SWAC were made available to them. Many of these contractors made use of this service. Effectively, the NBS offer to these contractors was to augment their contracts by providing free computational services of a type which was not as yet available elsewhere. It is interesting to note that when IBM announced that they would build a “Defense Calculator” if they get 12 orders, 6 of the 12 orders came from INA’s computer customers. The “Defense Calculator” became the IBM 701 – their entry into the “Electronic Computer Age.””

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, Mathematicians Learning to Use Computers: The Institute for Numerical Analysis UCLA 1947-1954, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

So in 1956 when von Neumann was planning to move to California to focus on computer research, the future Silicon Valley region in Northern California, be it academically or industrially in the computer field, paled in comparison to the Los Angeles region in Southern California.

Moreover, von Neumann’s role as the U.S. Air Force’s leading scientific adviser on ICBM helped bring additional military aerospace presence to the Los Angeles region:

“In July 1955, along with von Neumann and others, Schriever had an audience with President Eisenhower in the West Wing. He explained not only the paramount importance of ICBMs and the “radical” new organization he had established near Los Angeles to develop them, but also why he had not handed the project over to commercial aircraft contractors…

“Most impressive!” Ike declared. … Eisenhower secretly ordered the Pentagon to build ICBMs with “maximum urgency.” That same summer, Schriever learned from intelligence sources how little time they had: the Soviets were already testing ­intermediate-range ballistic missiles.”

(Michael Beschloss, October 1, 2009, The New York Times)

But von Neumann was also a great mathematician and so the specifics of mathematical computing and numerical analysis could also be factors influencing his decision choosing between UCLA and UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley had mathematics professor Richard Lehmer, cited in an earlier quote as one of the leaders of the CALDIC computer project.

I know it might not sound that big to someone of von Neumann’s ambitions. But recall, as previously quoted in Part 4, that Berkeley math professor Derrick H. Lehmer – the same person – became the director of UCLA’s Institute for Numerical Analysis at the time of the Loyalty Oath controversy in the early 1950s, when he joined 3 other Berkeley math professors among 29 tenured Berkeley professors, and 2 at UCLA, to express objection to McCarthyism:

“Wanting to show proof of loyalty, Robert Gordon Sproul, then President of the University of California, proposed the Loyalty Oath which would have all professors declare they were not and never had been communists.

Some 29 tenured professors from UC Berkeley and two from UCLA (one of whom later became a UC President) refused to sign. …

The Regents of the time mandated that all professors had to sign, or be fired. In the Mathematics Department, three professors refused: John Kelley, Hans Lewy, and Pauline Sperry. Another professor, D.H. Lehmer, attempted to avoid signing by taking a leave of absence to take a federal job at UCLA as Director at the Institute for Numerical Analysis. …”

(“Loyalty Oath Controversy: Interview with Leon Henkin”, Fall 2000, Vol. VII, No. 1, Berkeley Mathematics Newsletter)

Derrick Lehmer’s former directorship at the INA at UCLA was a strong credential in the computing field and thus an encouraging factor; John von Neumann himself had been a distinguished visitor at INA:

“INA attracted many distinguished visitors such as, John von Neumann, Solomon Lefschetz, Edward Teller, Norbert Wiener, and many others, …”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

But I have to concede that the contrast of 29 Berkeley professors refusing to sign the loyalty oath to UCLA’s only 2 refusals, unfortunately, went opposite to von Neumann’s Cold War strategizing at RAND and his close collaboration with nuclear weapons scientists like Edward Teller, also a distinguished visitor at INA as cited above.

Lehmer returned to Berkeley in 1953, and in 1954 the National Bureau of Standards ended the Institute for Numerical Analysis due to the objection of the U.S. Department of Defense, leaving the SWAC computer to UCLA:

“THE PERIOD SUMMER 1953 THROUGH SPRING 1954

D. H. Lehmer returned to the University of California at Berkeley in August and C. B. Tompkins took over the Directorship of INA. …

…

The National Bureau of Standards was a co-sponsor with the American Society of a Symposium on Numerical Analysis held at Santa Monica City College, August 26-28. John H. Curtiss was the chairman of the organizing committee. The symposium was entitled “American Mathematical Society Sixth Symposium in Applied Mathematics: Numerical Analysis.” …

… A large number of the participants had been associated with NBS and INA as visiting scientists. NBS and INA were represented by C. B. Tompkins, Olga Taussky-Todd, Emma Lehmer, M. R. Hestenes, T. S. Motzkin, and W. R. Wasow. …

…

David Saxon returned to his position in the Department of Physics at UCLA. He had a distinguished career in research and in administration. In 1975 he became President of the University of California. In 1983 he was appointed Chairman of the Corporation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We now begin the final period of existence of INA. …

…

The decision of Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, to no longer permit a non-DOD Government agency to serve as administrator of projects carried out at a university but supported entirely, or in large part, by DOD funds, caused the National Bureau of Standards to give up its administration of INA by June 30, 1954. The University of California was invited to take over this administration. The university was not in a position to take over all sections of INA. However, UCLA agreed to take over the administration of the research group, the SWAC and its maintenance, and the Library. … The question of faculty status of INA members was to be dealt with after the takeover had been accomplished. The new organization was to be called Numerical Analysis Research (NAR). …”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

As quoted, the INA at UCLA had been under the administration of the National Bureau of Standards, then U.S. Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson decided that a government non-defense agency should no longer manage projects of substantial defense funding, and so the INA as administered by the NBS and funded by the ONR had to end.

Nevertheless, I note that the physicist David Saxon mentioned above was one of those only 2 UCLA professors refusing to sign the McCarthy-era loyalty oath, one of whom later a UC president as quoted earlier: Saxon was the future president of the University of California encompassing UCLA, UC Berkeley and many other campuses.

(“David S. Saxon, 85; Physicist Forced Out in McCarthy Era Later Led UC System in a Time of Tight Budgets”, by Elaine Woo, December 9, 2005, Los Angeles Times; and, “IN MEMORIAM: David Stephen Saxon: President Emeritus University of California: 1920 – 2005”, by Richard C. Atkinson, The University of California)

And I am struck by the contrast between the title of the above-quoted 1991 book by Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd on the history of NBS’s INA at UCLA in 1947-1954, “Mathematicians Learning to Use Computers”, and the title of a The New York Times article discussed in Part 4 about the 1986 International Congress of Mathematicians held at UC Berkeley featuring my Ph.D. Adviser Stephen Smale as the leading plenary speaker, “MATHEMATICIANS FINALLY LOG ON”.

Mathematicians were “learning to use computers” in the 1940s and 1950s, and yet it took them until the 1980s to “finally log on”!

A timeline, in the context of the facts reviewed earlier, seemed to be: in the late 1940s and early 1950s mathematicians were “learning to use computers” at the Institute for Numerical Analysis run by the National Bureau of Standards at UCLA, until 1954 when the institute was terminated due to a Pentagon decision; in 1956 John von Neumann, a leading mathematician and the “father of computers”, was deciding on which UC campus to move to for computer research and chose UCLA, which no longer held a dominant lead over UC Berkeley but his Cold War think-tank RAND was nearby which had also followed his computer design; in 1957 von Neumann died of cancer at an early age of 53; then it took another 3 decades for mathematicians to “finally log on” computers.

I know my timeline appears stretching the facts, namely that the death of one mathematician, as great as von Neumann might be, could have such a devastating impact on the history of mathematicians’ acquaintance with computers.

But there were other intriguing and tell-tale facts hinting at a similar timeline.

Within a small number of years following the the world’s leading gathering of mathematicians in 1986 at Berkeley, as mentioned in Part 4, several Berkeley mathematicians in the computational fields who influenced my study there, Richard Karp, Stephen Smale, Andrew Majda, William Kahan, and also the University of Wisconsin’s Carl de Boor, all mentioned in Part 4, received the John von Neumann Lecture honor of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics:

“The John von Neumann lecturers:

…

• 1986 Jacques-Louis Lions
• 1987 Richard M. Karp
• 1988 Germund G. Dahlquist
• 1989 Stephen Smale
• 1990 Andrew J. Majda
• 1992 R. Tyrrell Rockafellar
• 1994 Martin D. Kruskal
• 1996 Carl de Boor
• 1997 William (Velvel) Kahan

…”

(“The John von Neumann Lecture”, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

Not only that starting in 1987 these Berkeley professors received the John von Neumann Lecture honor, but that none of the prior recipients in the SIAM’s list cited above, starting from 1960 and including mathematicians, physicists and other scientists, had been a Berkeley recipient as far as I know.

So, like The New York Times said mathematicians “finally log on” at the 1986 ICM held at UC Berkeley, and then the UC Berkeley mathematicians, i.e., those whose work facilitated it, finally receive an honor named for John von Neumann – now imagine if von Neumann himself had been living and leading in the missing decades!

Recall an anecdote told in Part 4, that in the fall of 1983 when I was contemplating doing Ph.D. study with the mathematician Smale or the numerical analyst Andrew Majda, Majda commented to me that Smale “knows nothing about numerical analysis”; I note here that Majda had in fact been a professor at UCLA before Berkeley, and was moving to Princeton where von Neumann had been famous.

But despite Majda’s opinion, SIAM awarded Smale the John von Neumann Lecture honor one year before it accorded Majda. It illustrated that the contributions to the computational fields by the more pure math-inclined mathmaticians like Stephen Smale were appreciated by the applied mathematics community.

Back in August 1953 when the National Bureau of Standards and the Institute for Numerical Analysis hosted in Santa Monica an event titled, “American Mathematical Society Sixth Symposium in Applied Mathematics: Numerical Analysis” – as earlier quoted from the book by Hestenes and Todd – it was a first for computing: the AMS Symposia in Applied Mathematics had begun in the late 1940s and this 6th symposium was the first to devote to computational issues.

(“Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics”, AMS eBook Collections, American Mathematical Society)

In the summer of 1953 John von Neumann was in fact the outgoing AMS president, serving 1951-1953. At the time, von Neumann’s nuclear science expertise was giving him increasingly prominent national responsibilities: he became a General Advisory Committee member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1952, and a member of the Technical Advisory Panel on Atomic Energy in 1953.

(Herman H. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, 1972, Princeton University Press)

The INA’s closure in 1954 was a major setback to the mathematical computing field, but John von Neumann was moving to the top in the nuclear arena, appointed a U.S. Atomic Energy Commissioner by President Dwight Eisenhower – and on that job for only 6 months before a diagnosis that he had cancer:

“In October 1954 Eisenhower appointed Von Neumann to the Atomic Energy Commission. Von Neumann accepted, although the Air Force and the senators who confirmed him insisted that he retain his chairmanship of the Air Force ballistic missile panel.

Von Neumann had been on the new job only six months when the pain first struck in the left shoulder. After two examinations, the physicians at Bethesda Naval Hospital suspected cancer. Within a month Von Neumann was wheeled into surgery at the New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston. A leading pathologist, Dr. Shields Warren, examined the biopsy tissue and confirmed that the pain was a secondary cancer. Doctors began to race to discover the primary locations. Several weeks later they found it in the prostate. Von Neumann, the agreed, did not have long to live.”

(Clay Blair, Jr., February 25, 1957, Volume 42, Number 8, Life)

When the INA was closing, most of its scientists and engineers left for jobs elsewhere, including going to the industry and to RAND, while a few went to UC faculty jobs:

“At this time, a Numerical Analysis section was set up at NBS in Washington with John Todd as Chief and with, on a smaller scale, a mission similar to that of INA. …

…

The engineers resigned on November 1, 1953 and accepted positions with the Magnavox Corporation. …

By June 30, 1954, various members of INA had accepted positions in industry and in various departments of universities. For example, B. Handy, A. D. Hestenes, M. Howard, and E. C. Yowell were employed by National Cash Register. S. Marks and A. Rosenthal went to the Rand Corporation. …

During his leave of absence from INA, Lanczos was employed by North American Aviation as a specialist in computing. In 1954 at the invitation of Eamon de Valera, who was at that time Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, Lanczos accepted the post of Senior Professor in the School of Theoretical Physics of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. …

In 1954 Harry Huskey accepted a faculty position at UC-Berkeley, where he continued to make significant contributions in the computer field. In 1967 he moved to UC-Santa Cruz to serve as Professor of Computer and Information Science. There he set up the USCS Computer Center and served as its Director from 1967-1977. Internationally, he was in great demand as a consultant to various computer centers, e.g., centers in India, Pakistan, Burma, Brazil, and Jordan. …

…

Charles B. Tompkins became a member of the Department of Mathematics at UCLA. He was in charge of the NAR Project … He continued to make the computing facility available to all interested faculty and students. …”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

The above quote noted that the National Bureau of Standards had not had a numerical analysis group in the U.S. Capital until its INA in Los Angeles was shutting down.

Another key fact cited above was that Harry Huskey, quoted earlier as leader of the SWAC computer development and leader of computer training for U.S. government contractors, moved to UC Berkeley in 1954.

Huskey had been an original member of the first electronic computer ENIAC project and met von Neumann there although as he later recalled, he and his fellow ENIAC engineers did not have a high opinion of von Neumann because the latter did not pay attention to details:

“… I heard that there were projects at the electrical engineering department of the Moore School at the university, and I applied for part time work. Since their work was classified they couldn’t tell me what they were doing, so I had no idea what I would be doing. When finally clearance came I was the showed the ENIAC and I’ve worked in computers ever since.

…

… The von Neumann report was not helpful, in my opinion. So I think the answer– well, we had general meetings in which von Neumann participated. And I think the people who were actually working on the project took the feeling that, “Well, he doesn’t worry about the details. He waves his hand.” That sort of position. …”

(“Oral History of Harry Huskey”, interview by William Aspray, February 7, 2006, Computer History Museum)

So later in 1956 when von Neumann contemplated about UCLA or UC Berkeley to move to, a key computer development leader who had moved from the INA at UCLA to Berkeley was not so positive about him.

In 1954 it was Derrick Lehmer and also Paul Morton, cited earlier as leaders of the CALDIC computer project, who offered Huskey his Berkeley professorship in both mathematics and electrical engineering departments:

“The fact that INA was a project under the Bureau of Standards caused it to be terminated as a Bureau project. The SWAC computer was given to the Engineering Department of UCLA, and the mathematical research part of INA was set up as a project in the Math Department of UCLA. And so that ended that phase of things. I had gone on leave to Wayne University with Jacobson, with the charter to set up a computer center there, and so I spent the year working on that, and when I came back to the Bureau, all this other stuff had happened. So the question was, what is the future? And at that point, Lehmer and Paul Morton at Berkeley offered me a position, so I took that. It was an associate professorship.

…

It was half math and half EE, and so on July 1st of that year, I moved to Berkeley. That’s about the whole story.”

(interview by William Aspray, February 7, 2006, Computer History Museum)

As mentioned earlier, Berkeley’s CALDIC computer project was reportedly completed in 1954 but then Douglas Engelbart later said it was still not when he graduated in 1955. So it is possible that Huskey’s arrival helped finish it.

Like Huskey, Lehmer’s association with the computer and von Neumann had come earlier; in 1945-1946 Lehmer was a member of the Computations Committee planning ENIAC’s use at the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground:

“… A Computations Committee had been established in 1945 to provide a group of experts to plan for the arrival of ENIAC at the BRL and to see that it would be applied productively. The members of the Computations Committee included the mathematicians Haskell Curry, Franz Alt, and Derrick Lehmer and the astronomer Leland Cunningham. All of them had come to Aberdeen during the war to assist with the BRL’s computational work, and they retained a connection with the lab for several years afterward—some as employees, others as frequent visitors. …”

(Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope, ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, 2016, The MIT Press)

The Aberdeen Proving Ground, as previously mentioned in a quote in Part 4, was a military research facility where Berkeley math professor Hans Lewy had worked during World War II, who later was one of Lehmer’s fellow objectors to the McCarthy-era UC loyalty oath.

Lehmer had strong historical credentials for overseeing ENIAC computing; he had been a pioneer in building electro-mechanical computing devices:

“Lehmer made contributions to many parts of number theory, but he was especially interested in relevant numerical calculations. He was unsurpassed in this field. …

While still an undergraduate, Lehmer realized that it would be helpful to have a mechanical device for combining linear congruences, and at various times, he supervised the construction of several such machines. These special-purpose computers, known as sieves, were particularly useful in factoring large numbers. The first model, constructed in 1927, used 19 bicycle chains. …

In 1932, an improved sieve was constructed and displayed at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Here, instead of bicycle chains, disk gears with various numbers of teeth were used, with holes opposite each tooth. For a given problem, the unwanted holes were plugged, and a photoelectric cell was used to stop the machine when open holes were lined up. …

Lehmer was a pioneer in the development of modern computing machines and in their use in the solution of scientific problems, particularly those arising in number theory. In 1945-46 he was called to the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the Aberdeen Proving Ground to prepare that laboratory for the installation of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer. he observed the completion of that computer in Philadelphia and took part in its testing in Aberdeen. …”

(“Derrick H. Lehmer, Mathematics: Berkeley: 1905-1991 Professor Emeritus”, John L. Kelley, Raphael M. Robinson, Abraham H. Taub, and P. Emery Thomas, 1991, University of California)

I note that the Lehmer sieves built in the 1920s and 1030s as explained above could only do specific mathematical computations – unlike later ENIAC, the first “general-purpose” electronic computer.

As a mathematician, Lehmer’s passion was in computations for number theory, and even on ENIAC as in the following anecdote of a July 4 holiday weekend he and his wife Emma chose to spend on ENIAC:

“Lehmer’s Holiday Computations

Another well-documented calculation from 1946 was carried out by the Berkeley number theorist Derrick Lehmer. Lehmer spent the year 1945-46 at the Ballistic Research Lab as a member of a group helping to plan for ENIAC’s use. He experimented with the machine by running “little problems” when it was otherwise not in use. …

As Derrick Lehmer later recounted, he and his family descended on ENIAC over the July 4 weekend, a weekend during which very little work is done in the United States. (Lehmer’s wife, Emma, was a noted mathematician who did much of the computational work required to get ENIAC’s output from this visit into publishable form.) With help from John Mauchly, they were allowed to “pull everything off the machine” and set up their own problem.

…

Lehmer credited Mauchly with the idea of implementing a sieve on ENIAC. Lehmer’s program, as partially reconstructed by the historians Maarten Bullynck and Liesbeth de Mol, made use of ENIAC’s ability to perform several parts of a computation at once. In the reconstruction, fourteen accumulators were used to simultaneously test a single number against different prime numbers. Lehmer’s paper does not provide enough information to make it certain that his original implementation exploited that technique, but in discussing the computation he later complained that ENIAC “was a highly parallel machine, before von Neumann spoiled it.” …”

(Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope, 2016, The MIT Press)

While doing research in parallel computation beginning in the mid-late 1980s, I became familiar with the term, “the von Neumann bottleneck” – related to something Lehmer said in the above quote – coined by IBM computer scientist John Backus:

“… What is a von Neumann computer? When von Neumann and others conceived it over thirty years ago, it was an elegant, practical, and unifying idea that simplified a number of engineering and programming problems that existed then. Although the conditions that produced its architecture have changed radically, we nevertheless still identify the notion of “computer” with this thirty year old concept.

In its simplest form a von Neumann computer has three parts: a central processing unit (or CPU), a store, and a connecting tube that can transmit a single word between the CPU and the store (and send an address to the store). I propose to call this tube the von Neumann bottleneck. …

…

… Not only is this tube a literal bottleneck for the data traffic of a problem, but, more importantly, it is an intellectual bottleneck that has kept us tied to word-at-a-time thinking instead of encouraging us to think in terms of the larger conceptual units of the task at hand. …”

(“Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? A Functional Style and Its Algebra of Programs”, by John Backus, 19 77 ACM Turing Award Lecture, Association for Computing Machinery)

Whatever the limitations of the von Neumann computer design, back in the 1940s and 1950s on the early computers the kind of mathematical delicacies Lehmer enjoyed was the opposite of the norm, while the norm was serious military research led by von Neumann, especially for atomic bomb development:

“But ENIAC’s more profound contributions to advances in military science and technology came with Cold War work that would have been prohibitively expensive to attempt by hand. ENIAC simulated explosions of atomic and hydrogen bombs, airflow at supersonic speeds, and designs for nuclear reactors. With the considerable assistance of John von Neumann, it established the digital computer as a vital tool within the emerging military-industrial-academic complex carrying out cutting-edge research and development work during the early years of the Cold War. A few years later, IBM launched its first commercial computer, the Model 701, as the “defense calculator” and sold it almost exclusively to defense contractors. The United States Government even managed the delivery queue for IBM, making sure that computers were dispatched first to the firms doing the most important work.”

(Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope, 2016, The MIT Press)

As the above quote indicates, in the 1940s-1950s military priorities were the highest of the “cutting-edge research and development work”, and allocation of computer use was centrally managed by the U.S. government – be it for academic, industrial or commercial usage.

From this perspective, one could refer to it as U.S. government generosity that for 7 years, 1947-1954, mathematicians got to go to the Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA to learn to use the SWAC computer run by the National Bureau of Standards – in 2 of the years even under the directorship of Derrick Lehmer, an objector to the UC Loyalty Oath – before Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson pulled the plug in 1954.

The historian of science Liesbeth De Mol has done a comparison showing the contrasting mathematical focuses of Lehmer and von Neumann, i.e., Lehmer’s pure mathematics interests versus von Neumann’s applied mathematics ambitions.

De Mol wrote of Derrick Lehmer the mathematician:

“Derrick H. Lehmer (1905-1991) was born into number theory. His father, Derrick N. Lehmer, was a number-theorist, known for his factor table up to 10,000,000 and his stencil sheets to find factors of large numbers. …

…

Throughout Lehmer’s papers one finds numerous statements about the experimental character of mathematics and more specifically number theory, which he regarded as a kind of observational science. It is exactly in this context that one should understand Lehmer’s interest in computers. He regarded them as instruments to experimentally study mathematics … Already as a young boy, Lehmer began to design and build small special-purpose machines, known as sieves, to assist him in his number-theoretical work.

…

When World War II began, Lehmer “got involved into war work mostly having to do with the analysis of bombing…”. He built a special-purpose machine, a “bombing analyzer [which] was a combination of the digital and the analog device. […] I demonstrated it in Washington one time at the Pentagon. […] This thing was Army Ordnance, I guess. …”. Just after the war Lehmer was called upon by the Ballistic Research Laboratories (Aberdeen Proving Ground) to become a member of the ‘Computations Committee’, which was assembled to prepare for utilizing the ENIAC after its completion …”

(“Doing Mathematics on the ENIAC. Von Neumann’s and Lehmer’s different visions”, by Liesbeth De Mol, in E. Wilhelmus, I. Witzke (eds.), Mathematical practice and development throughout History, 2008, Logos Verlag)

In short, Lehmer was an experimentally and computationally oriented pure mathematician, who also proved his abilities in his wartime work for the military.

De Mol wrote of John von Neumann the mathematician:

“John von Neumann is far more famous than D.H. Lehmer, not in the least because the hardware of computers nowadays is still referred to as ‘the von Neumann architecture’. He was a mathematician by education and made major contributions in many different fields, including: mathematical logic, set theory, economics and game theory, quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, computer science,…

Von Neumann’s acquaintance with the field of mathematical logic had a major influence on his work on computers. …

It was not his interest in logic, however, that triggered his interest in the subject. … Ulam explains why von Neumann got interested in computers …:

It must have been in 1938 that I first had discussions with von Neumann about problems in mathematical physics, and the first I remember were when he was very curious about the problem of mathematical treatment of turbulence in hydrodynamics. […] He was fascinated by the role of Reynolds number, a dimensionless number, a pure number because it is the ratio of two forces, the inertial one and the viscous […] [von Neumann] […] wanted to find an explanation or at least a way to understand this very puzzling large number. […] I remember that in our discussions von Neumann realized that the known analytical methods, the method of mathematical analysis, even in their most advanced forms, were not powerful enough to give any hope of obtaining solutions in closed form. This was perhaps one of the origins of his desire to try to devise methods of very fast numerical computations, a more humble way of proceeding. Proceeding by “brute force” is considered by some to be more lowbrow. […] I remember also discussions about the possibilities of predicting the weather at first only locally, and soon after that, about how to calculate the circulation of meteorological phenomena around the globe.

Von Neumann got particularly interested in computers for doing numerical calculations in the context of theoretical physics and thus understood, quite early, that fast computing machines could be very useful in the context of applied mathematics.”

(Liesbeth De Mol, in E. Wilhelmus, I. Witzke (eds.), Mathematical practice and development throughout History, 2008, Logos Verlag)

As De Mol described, von Neumann was a pure mathematician, but more importantly an applied mathematician ambitious for real-world applications.

It was von Neumann’s applied-math research in fluid dynamics that led to his participation in the atomic bomb development, for which he began searching for available computing power, actively surveying the existing state-of-the-art calculating machines, as De Mol described:

“In 1943, during World War II, von Neumann was invited to join the Manhattan project – the project to develop the atomic bomb – because of his work on fluid dynamics. He soon realized that the problems he was working on involved a lot of computational work which might take years to complete. He submitted a request for help, and in 1944 he was presented a list of people he could visit. He visited Howard Aiken and saw his Harvard Mark I (ASCC) calculator. He knew about the electromechanical relay computers of George Stibitz, and about the work by Jan Schilt at the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. These machines however were still relatively slow to solve the problems von Neumann was working on. …”

(Liesbeth De Mol, in E. Wilhelmus, I. Witzke (eds.), Mathematical practice and development throughout History, 2008, Logos Verlag)

So, even taking into account INA’s 1954 closure reducing UCLA’s strength in computing before von Neumann deciding in 1956 to go to UCLA or Berkeley, the two former INA computational mathematicians who returned to or moved to Berkeley, Lehmer and Huskey, were not the compatible types for von Neumann.

In the spirit of my review in Part 4 of some Berkeley mathematicians, I would like to view the contrast between Lehmer and von Neumann – articulated by Liesbeth De Mol – as an older-generation phenomenon prior to the contrast between Stephen Smale and Alexander Chorin in the 1970s and 1980s: Smale’s anti-war politics was more outspoken and higher-profile than Lehmer’s expression of objection to McCarthyism, whereas Chorin, instrumental in forming a faculty group in numerical analysis specializing in fluid dynamics, affiliated with the Lawrence Berkeley national lab and funded by military research agencies, was probably not quite von Neumann’s caliber.

Chorin’s former Ph.D. adviser Peter Lax, of New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, had in fact become a protégé of von Neumann’s while a teenager before university; later during the Manhattan Project, Lax worked in the Los Alamos national lab and got his start in the subject of fluid dynamic shock waves – in the fall of 1983 Andrew  Majda introduced me to the subject as in Part 4 – there through von Neumann’s introduction.

(“NYU’s Peter Lax Wins ‘Nobel Prize of Mathematics’”, by Gary Shapiro, March 23, 2005, The New York Sun)

While the Polish-born Jewish Chorin as an incoming NYU Ph.D. student was initially mistaken by his adviser Peter Lax for a Hungarian compatriot, as in a tale told in Part 4, von Neumann had been the unmistakable Hungarian Jewish genius – the only Hungarian genius according to Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner:

“… Five of Hungary’s six Nobel Prize winners were Jews born between 1875 and 1905, and one was asked why Hungary in his generation had brought forth so many geniuses. Nobel laureate Wigner replied that he did not understand the question. Hungary in that time had produced only one genius, Johnny von Neumann.”

(Norman MacRae, John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More, 1992, Pantheon Books)

As my review so far has shown, in 1956 when von Neumann planned to move to California, if his intent was to focus on computer research as described in Norman MacRae’s book, rather than on nuclear science, then the Los Angeles region of UCLA was stronger in that respect and more conducive for his interests politically, industrially and academically, than UC Berkeley and the nascent Silicon Valley.

But the year 1956, tantalizingly, also was when some things began to happen in favor of the future Silicon Valley.

One of the happenings was that IBM established a research laboratory in San Jose, the future Silicon Valley’s largest city, as quoted earlier, and several Berkeley CALDIC computer project students had their industry-leading career start there, working on digital magnetic storage systems.

I understand that such computer peripherals might not be much for a prominent computer pioneer and ambitious scientific leader like John von Neumann. But IBM had held, and would continue to hold, von Neumann in high regard.

Following von Neumann’s death, Herman Goldstine, his former collaborator at the ENIAC project and his deputy at the Princeton IAS computer project, became the founding director of the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM’s central research organ, Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York state:

“… long before the Eniac was running it was obvious it had several major design defects. The gargantuan machine, weighing 30 tons and containing 18,000 electronic tubes, took several days to program and could store just 20 numbers. A study group for an improved machine, to be called the Edvac (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), was established, consisting of Goldstine, Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert (Eniac’s principal engineer) and Arthur Burks (a mathematical logician). The group was shortly joined by John von Neumann.

In June 1945, von Neumann wrote the seminal Edvac Report, whose wide circulation established the new computing paradigm and ultimately the worldwide computer industry. Von Neumann’s sole authorship of the report, and his towering reputation as America’s leading mathematician, completely overshadowed the contributions of the others in the group, causing deep resentment in Eckert and Mauchly.

At the end of the war the group broke up because of these tensions. Eckert and Mauchly formed the computer company that eventually became today’s Unisys Corporation, while von Neumann, Goldstine and Burks went to the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton University, to build a computer in an academic setting. Goldstine was appointed assistant director of the computer project, and director from 1954. In addition he co-wrote with von Neumann a set of reports, Planning and Coding of Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument (1947) that established many early ideas in computer programming.

The IAS computer was an important design influence on the early computers of IBM, for whom von Neumann was a consultant. In 1958, following von Neumann’s death and the termination of the IAS computer project, Goldstine became the founding director of the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM’s Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.”

(“Herman Goldstine: Co-inventor of the modern computer and historian of its development”, by Martin Campbell-Kelly, July 4, 2004, The Independent)

As described, the leading architects of the original electronic computer ENIAC, Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, subsequently took an entrepreneurial route, forming a commercial company to further computer development, whereas von Neumann led Goldstine and several others starting the IAS computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton – a project that not only led to proliferation of computer development in academic and scientific institutions as discussed earlier, but also had important design influence on IBM computers, with von Neumann himself a consultant for IBM.

Von Neumann had not been a founding member of the ENIAC project; it was Goldstine who had started the project on behalf of the U.S. Army, and then invited von Neumann’s participation in 1944:

“While there are challengers for the title of “first computer,” the dedication of ENIAC on Feb. 15, 1946, is widely accepted as the day the Information Age began. And like the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia 170 years before, it declared a revolution.

…

Dr. Goldstine — now 82 and executive officer of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia — recalls arriving at Aberdeen in 1942 as a newly commissioned lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. He had just been pulled out of his squadron when the Army realized that it had better uses for a Ph.D. mathematician from the University of Chicago.

At Aberdeen, Lieutenant Goldstine was given the mission of speeding up the calculation of firing tables needed for accurate artillery and the charts needed for bombing runs. At the time, the necessary math was done by a group of young women using mechanical desk calculators. The system wasn’t working.

…

In the process of consulting with university experts, Lieutenant Goldstine met a 32-year-old physicist named John W. Mauchly, who outlined his idea for an all-electronic digital computer that could perform computations 1,000 times faster than a human.

Lieutenant Goldstine was intrigued, so he took the idea back to his boss, Lt. Col. Paul Gillon. He gave the project both his approval and its name — Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

…

ENIAC was designed and built at the Moore School by a team led by Dr. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, an engineer in his early 20s. The newly promoted Captain Goldstine ran interference with the Army brass and contributed his own considerable expertise, says Paul Deitz, a civilian official at Aberdeen who is an unofficial historian of the ENIAC project.

…

In 1944, soon after the first part of ENIAC was completed, Dr. Goldstein had a chance meeting at the Aberdeen train station with John L. von Neumann, one of the leading mathematicians of his day and an adviser to the Ballistic Research Laboratory at the proving ground.

Dr. Goldstein recalls that when he told Dr. von Neumann about the ENIAC project, “he suddenly became galvanized.” It turned out that Dr. von Neumann had been working on a project in Los Alamos, N.M., that required high-power computing.”

(“Computer age had clumsy start Electronic era: Born 50 years ago, the ancestor of today’s PCs and calculators was slow, unreliable and weighed 30 tons”, by Michael Dresser, February 12, 1996, The Baltimore Sun)

Clearly, had von Neumann gone to the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-late 1950s the newly founded IBM San Jose research laboratory would have been privileged to receive his advice.

The presence of national-level nuclear science, top-level West Coast universities with growing interest in computers, and IBM’s arrival in the Bay Area, could have given von Neumann another chance on pioneer computer research – as an alternative to the more active, military-funded industrial computer activities in the Los Angeles region where von Neumann also had his RAND and JOHNNIAC.

21 years later views about von Neumann’s computer design began to change, and it was an IBM San Jose Research Laboratory scientist, John Backus quoted earlier, who put forth the term, “the von Neumann bottleneck”, in his 1977 Turing Award lecture which made references to von Neumann a whopping over 90 times – love him or hate him!

(John Backus, 19 77 ACM Turing Award Lecture, Association for Computing Machinery)

Within the academia, the termination of the Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA in 1954, when the National Bureau of Standards gave up its management role due to the Pentagon’s objection, was a watershed event in the history of the computing field.

Harry Huskey, the SWAC computer project leader and computer training leader at INA who subsequently moved to Berkeley, later blamed the INA’s end on McCarthyism targeting the NBS:

“… some company made an additive to add to batteries that was supposed to extend their life, and the Bureau of Standards was given the job of testing it. So they tested it and decided that it didn’t do any good at all, and reported this. The guy that manufactured it contacted his congressman and said whatever, and that ended up with the Commerce Department appointing a committee, the Kelly Committee, I think it was, to review what the Bureau of Standards was doing, and this is also tied up with McCarthy. McCarthy was witch-hunting, you know, and I think the– well, they’re almost independent, but anyway, the McCarthy business caused the Bureau to fire a number of people, starting at the top. Ed Condon was fired. The next director, Alan Astin I think, was forced to resign or fired, or something. In the math division, John Curtiss was fired.

The whole Bureau operated with a good fraction of its budget coming from projects that were financed by other government agencies, and almost all of that was wiped out. If the Navy had a project going on, they would transfer it back to the Navy, and that sort of thing, so there was a real cutback in operation.

The fact that INA was a project under the Bureau of Standards caused it to be terminated as a Bureau project. …”

(interview by William Aspray, February 7, 2006, Computer History Museum)

I wouldn’t be surprised if the INA’s demise had to do with McCarthyism, given that in the summer of 1954 after its closure, John Nash was arrested for public homosexual activity in nearby Santa Monica and expelled from RAND.

On the other hand, from an opposite viewpoint, the end of NBS’s broad management role in scientific research may have reflected a Pentagon objective to get the ‘bang for their buck’, i.e., to focus funding on research directly relevant to the U.S. military.

Historically in the United States, substantial government support for scientific research had begun only with the coming of World War II:

“… During the Great Depression … a Science Advisory Board was created by executive order to advise the President. However, the board’s attempts to establish a basic research program in universities did not succeed.

The most significant step toward a durable relationship between government and science came in 1940. The war raging in Europe presented an opportunity for scientific work to affect a conflict. The leaders of the scientific community began to lobby for the creation of a government agency that would mobilize U.S. scientists for the country’s inevitable entry into the war. As a result, President Roosevelt created the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) under the chairmanship of Dr. Vannevar Bush. Bush was a former Dean of Engineering at MIT and was later the president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. …

A major landmark in the progress of governmental support for science in the United States turned out to be the creation of the expanded Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), under Vannevar Bush. This initiated a structure under which U.S. scientists were brought into war efforts through a contract mechanism, while leaving them free to pursue their creative work. …”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, An Uneasy Alliance: The Mathematics Research Center At the University of Wisconsin, 1956-1987, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

As in the above history, the U.S. government’s scientific research funding came primarily from World War II preparation and in the form of contracts, which did not prohibit the scientists from pursuing other scientific and creative interests: mobilization of the scientific community was led by the U.S. government’s National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) headed by former MIT Dean of Engineering Vannevar Bush, and later the expanded Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) under Bush became a contracting agency for wartime scientific research.

The ENIAC discussed earlier was a prominent example of military research and development by academic scientists: the development of the first general-purpose electronic computer was directly initiated, funded and supervised by the Army, but was carried out at a university; after its completion, the leading developers were free to move on to start their own company, or build computers in the academia.

After World War II, the Navy’s Office of Naval Research became the primary science funding agency before the founding of the National Science Foundation – with the exceptions of medical research funded by the National Institutes of Health, and nuclear science research funded by the Atomic Energy Commission:

“In 1946, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) was created to plan, foster, and encourage scientific research and to provide within the Department of the Navy a single office which by contract or otherwise was able to sponsor, obtain, and coordinate innovative research of general interest to all sectors of the Navy. … By and large, the naval authorities believed that most of the basic research carried out under ONR’s auspices should be published in the normal way. This policy allayed many fears in the academic and scientific community. The office began to take on the role that was envisaged for the yet-to-be-established National Science Foundation (NSF).

The National Institute of Health (NIH), established in 1930 and generously funded by OSRD during the war, became a major focus of government support for medical research in the universities. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was established in 1946, and this agency forged close links with universities by contracting research work to them and by building up the university-associated laboratories that it had inherited from the Manhattan Project. …”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

Despite the original recommendation by Vannevar Bush, the U.S. government’s leading science adviser, the NSF founded in 1950 did not include defense research in its charter; and the Army and Air Force proceeded to establish their own research agencies:

“When the NSF was eventually established in 1950, defense research was excluded from its terms of reference. In the initial recommendation, Dr. Bush had envisioned defense research as one of the organizational component of NSF’s charter. As a consequence, the Department of the Army, and subsequently the Air Force, established their own offices of research. The Department of the Army’s Office of Ordinance Research was established in June 1951 on the campus of Duke University.”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

As quoted above, Vannevar Bush, former MIT Dean of Engineering , had envisioned the National Science Foundation to have defense research as an organizational component.

Bush had outlined his vision in a July 1945 report to President Harry Truman, in which the proposed “National Research Foundation” would include a “Division of National Defense” alongside other divisions such as a “Division of Medical Research” and a “Division of Natural Sciences”.

(“Science The Endless Frontier: A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945”, National Science Foundation)

The actual outcome, i.e., an NSF without a defense research branch, was positive for someone like Stephen Smale, who in the 1960s faced the unpleasant prospect, as in Part 2, that his anti-war activism risked his NSF grant eligibility – fortunately the NSF did not need to defer to the Pentagon.

From this angle, the National Bureau of Standards’ loss of management role for defense-funded research projects was inline with the separation of the NSF and defense research, although some might reason that when it came to the administration of national standards for technology there should be as few exceptions as possible.

But as pointed out by Harry Huskey, quoted earlier, in 1953 the NBS’s loss came as a result of McCarthyism-type politics. There was a public scandal, Congressional hearings and the firing of key NBS leaders; at the recommendation of the Congressional Kelly Committee, the Pentagon transferred all weaponry research away from the NBS:

“… The Battery AD-X2 controversy, on the other hand, was serious indeed. It caused the firing of the Bureau’s director, followed eventually by full reinstatement; prompted the investigation of the Bureau by two high-level committees and brought about dramatic changes in its programs; provoked a furor in the whole scientific community and led a large number of the Bureau staff to threaten resignation; resulted in six days of hearings before a Senate select committee; made the Bureau and its director front-page news for months; brought about the resignation of an assistant secretary of commerce; and (in part) caused the transfer of 2000 persons from the Bureau to newly formed military laboratories.

…

It can be fairly said that no other single report has had as great an effect on the history of the Bureau as the “Kelly Committee Report,” as it is commonly known. …

…

… Hence it recommended the “transfer of weaponry projects to the Department of Defense,” but recommended “continued use of the Bureau by Department of Defense and Atomic Energy Commission for non-weaponry science and technical aid.” Following these recommendations, on September 27, 1953, four ordnance divisions, totaling 2000 persons—1600 in three divisions at the Harry Diamond Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, and 400 at the Missile Development Division in Corona, California—were transferred to Army Ordnance and Naval Ordnance respectively, although all operations remained at their respective sites. …”

(Elio Passaglia with Karma A. Beal, A Unique Institution: The National Bureau of Standards, 1950-1969, 1999, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

As the Kelly Committee stated, quoted above, that research in “non-weaponry science and technical aid” for the Department of Defense could continue within the NBS.

Obviously, most of the mathematical research and computer training at the Institute for Numerical Analysis, funded by the Office of Naval Research as mentioned earlier, was “non-weaponry science” and so should have been able to continue. But as quoted earlier, Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson decided to end NBS management of all defense agency-funded projects, including the INA.

The U.S. Army understood the importance of academic scientific research, as seen in the fact that its Office of Ordinance Research was first founded on the campus of Duke University, following the establishment of the NSF independent of the Pentagon, as quoted earlier.

The end of the INA became a point in time following which the Army directly went into initiating and supervising university-based mathematical research.

Led by Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau and Brigadier General Chester Clark, the Army proceeded with forming its own mathematics research center in the academia, with the focus on relevance to the interests of the Army:

“Army general officers such as Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau, Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin, and Brig. Gen. Chester Clark, and other officers such as Lt. Col. Ivan R. Hershner, recognized early in the 1950s that the Army is a major user of the fruits of research in mathematics, no matter what the source is. … these enlightened officers and other members of the Army establishment were successful in convincing the Army to establish a center of mathematical expertise at an academic institution.

In preparation for this crucial decision, the Mathematics Advisory Panel of the Army, a precursor group to the Army Mathematics Advisory Group (AMAG) and the Army Mathematics Steering Committee (AMSC), conducted a survey of the uses of mathematics in Army activities and combined that with a census of its mathematically trained personnel and its expenditures for mathematical investigation. …

… The Advisory Panel made two recommendations. First, it advised that the Army establish for itself a mathematics research center at an academic institution. The key aspects of the work statement were to conduct basic research in selected areas of mathematics relevant to the interests of the Army, to provide educational and training courses to the Army on current mathematical methods, and to be available for consulting on mathematical problems encountered by Army scientists and engineers. It was to carry on research in four areas…:

• Numerical analysis. This was broadly understood as the adaptation of mathematics to high-speed computation, to include the use of electronic computing machines, the formulation of mathematical problems for exploration by such computers, and hence the broadening of the field in which such computers could be used. This area was originally intended to include “the engineering physics of high-speed computers,” presumably what is now referred to as computer architecture and computer engineering, though unfortunately very little was in fact done at MRC in those areas.
• Statistics and the theory of probability.
• Applied mathematics, including ordinary and partial differential equations as well as physical mathematics with emphasis on fluid mechanics, elasticity, plasticity, electro-dynamics, electrical networks, wave guidance, and propagation. 
• Operations research, including such subfields as linear and nonlinear programming, game theory, decision theory, information theory, and optimization.

Second, the Advisory Panel recommended that it be recognized and established as a continuing body, with the assignment to inform itself about new mathematical developments and to keep itself informed of the Army’s needs in and uses of mathematics, to supervise activities of this kind, and to facilitate the interchange of relevant information between activities. Initially, this was a committee of about twenty-five, including four from academic institutions. The rest represented various Army activities.”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

In the above history account, the reflection of the military interests in the founding of an Army mathematics research center can be seen in the Army experts’ overwhelming dominance on the advisory panel over the academics.

Army experts led by Lieutenant Colonel Ivan R. Hershner, the University of Vermont’s mathematics department chairman, visited 26 universities that showed some interest, including, “Brown, Columbia, University of Chicago, Duke, California Institute of Technology, Harvard, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, MIT, New York University, the University of North Carolina, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Stanford, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Virginia”; out of 21 university proposals submitted, the University of Wisconsin was chosen:

“Towards the realization of the first recommendation, the chief of research and development of the Army appointed Ivan R. Hershner (then the chair of the Mathematics Department at the University of Vermont) to head an effort to explore with various universities and research groups their possible interest in this center. Letters were sent to over fifty U.S. institutions of higher learning. Based on the level of interest expressed, this small group of experts visited twenty-six universities …

This process resulted in twenty-one formal proposals. A technical advisory committee of Army scientists evaluated these proposals … The Army had offered to provide a state-of-the-art computer, but it expected that the selected university would supply suitable physical space to house the center. …

…

The decision to establish the Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin was announced on November 16, 1955, by Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin, chief of research and development of the U.S. Army. …

…

The first contract for MRC’s operation was signed on April 25, 1956, and the university designated Professor Rudolph E. Langer as MRC’s first director. ….”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

The Army Mathematics Research Center started in 1956, the same year IBM started its San Jose research lab.

It is interesting that following a nationwide search, the Army’s final choice of the academic host for its mathematics research center was the leading university in the home state of then Senator Joseph McCarthy.

That might be coincidental, but it wasn’t isolated. The Army’s Office of Ordinance Research had been founded in 1951, as quoted earlier, at Duke University, which happened to be the alma mater of the high-profile, staunchly anti-Communist Senator Richard Nixon – soon-to-be U.S. Vice President – from Southern California, whose political tie to North Carolina was intimate, even within the Senate, as recalled by future Senator Jesse Helms, then an assistant to Senator Willis Smith of North Carolina:

“Serving as administrative assistant to a United States Senator is a true learning experience. …

In 1951 there were ninety-six U.S. Senators representing the then forty-eight states…

One of those ninety-six Senators back then was a delightful young Republican Senator from California named Richard M. Nixon. I was impressed by his intellect and his genuine interest in working with people who shared conservative principles without concern for their party tag. Senator Nixon had a solid North Carolina connection because he was a graduate of the law school at Duke University. As I mentioned, Senator Smith had been on the university’s board of trustees for some time … There were many visits to Senator Smith’s office by then President of Duke, Arthur Hollis Edens, and Senator Nixon often stopped by to greet Dr. Edens. The Duke connection as fellow alumni helped establish a solid friendship between Senator Nixon and Senator Smith.

The assignment of office space had put Mr. Nixon’s offices between the offices of Senator Smith and North Carolina’s senior Senator, Clyde R. Hoey, on one corner of the third floor of the Russell Senate Office Building. …”

(Jesse Helms, Here’s where I Stand: A Memoir, 2005, Random House)

As illustrated, much thought had been given to the assignment of office locations in a Congressional building – let alone the location of an Army central research center.

The Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison began its life less than 2 years after the termination of the Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA, and in the same year 1956 when John von Neumann, former president of the American Mathematical Society and a top adviser to the U.S. military, was hospitalized for cancer treatment and made the decision to move to the University of California.

Von Neumann soon died, in February 1957 at the age of 53.

Shortly afterwards in May 1957, McCarthy suddenly died at only 48.

Prior to that, in the early summer of 1954 – just as the INA was closing – McCarthy’s ongoing Senate committee hearings hunting for Communists in the U.S. government were foiled by the Army, after he tried to target former Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“…Often, the information McCarthy used came from FBI files, which were full of rumor and third-hand accounts.
…

The McCarthy era began on February 9, 1950 when the obscure Republican senator from Wisconsin gave a speech to 275 members of the local Republican women’s club at the McClure Hotel in Wheeling, West Virginia.

“While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were known to the secretary of State and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy of the State Department,” McCarthy said…

…

McCarthy eventually made the mistake of turning his sights on President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A former Army general who had led allied forces to victory during World War II, Eisenhower was as American as apple pie.

As McCarthy began accusing Eisenhower of being soft on Communists, Hoover realized he would have to distance himself from the senator. Just before what became known as the Army-McCarthy hearings started on April 22, 1954, Hoover ordered the bureau to cease helping him. …

During the hearings, McCarthy failed to substantiate his claims that the Communists had penetrated the Army, which had hired a shrewd Boston lawyer, Joseph Welch, to represent it. McCarthy noted that Fred Fischer, a young lawyer in Welch’s firm, had been a member while at Harvard Law School of the National Lawyers Guild, described by the attorney general as the “legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party.” Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg had also been a member of the group.

Upon hearing this accusation, Welch responded, “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness.” When McCarthy continued to hound Fischer, Welch said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

After two months, the hearings were over, and so was McCarthy’s career. Watching the hearings on television, millions of Americans had seen how he bullied witnesses and what an unsavory character he was. Behind the scenes, Eisenhower pushed fellow Republicans to censure McCarthy.

In August 1954, a Senate committee was formed to investigate the senator. …

On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure him. After that, when he rose to speak, senators left the Senate chamber. Reporters no longer attended his press conferences. On May 2, 1957, McCarthy died at the age of forty-eight of acute hepatitis, widely believed to be a result of his alcoholism…”

(“The Real Story on Joe McCarthy”, by Ronald Kessler, April 7, 2008, Newsmax)

Under the Army’s supervision the Mathematics Research Center at Wisconsin-Madison excelled. A clear sign that the MRC viewed itself as inheriting the mantle of the INA at UCLA was the fact that J. Barkley Rosser, an early director of the INA, became the second director of the MRC in 1963:

“In 1949 he was asked to become the Director of Research at a newly created Institute for Numerical Analysis, located at UCLA and sponsored by the National Bureau of Standards. At this early stage in modern electronic computing, Rosser was successful in drawing together a stellar group of mathematicians whose ultimate impact on the future of computing was memorable. He also saw that the computer held great promise for pure mathematics; one example was a project aimed at finding high precision values for the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function. While the final publication was delayed until 1969, this was among the earliest computational evidence supporting a famous conjecture of Riemann connected with properties of the prime numbers.

With the Institute functioning, Rosser returned to Cornell. In 1953-54 he received a joint Guggenheim-Fulbright fellowship which he spent in Europe, writing a book on modern logic. However, because able scientific administrators are rare, he also continued to receive requests to fill such posts, serving on many panels and committees connected with the Space Program and related projects, as well as other scientific organizations and research centers. Among these: Director of the Institute for Defense Analysis, Chairman of the Mathematics Division of the NRC, and Chairman of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences.

In 1963 he moved permanently from Cornell to Wisconsin, to become the Director of the Mathematical Research Center, replacing the first Director, Rudolph Langer, who had chosen to retire. The presence of two longtime Princeton friends, Joe Hirshfelder and Steve Kleene, was an added incentive for Rosser. The MRC operated under a contract from the Department of the Army…”

(“Memorial Resolution of the Faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison: On the Death of Emeritus Professor J. Barkley Rosser”, March 5, 1990, University of Wisconsin Madison)

From INA directorship in 1949 to directorship of the Institute for Defense Analysis, chairmanship of the National Research Council’s mathematics division, and then directorship of the Army mathematics research center, the mathematician J. Barkley Rosser took on several important management positions affiliated with the U.S. government and the defense establishment. As a result, as told in the above quote, some of his own mathematical research did not get to publication for 2 decades until 1969.

Interestingly, that particular research piece of Rosser’s was the use of the computer at INA, the SWAC computer as mentioned earlier, to calculate the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function, i.e., to provide evidence for the Riemann Hypothesis – a famous pure mathematics problem which John Nash’s unsuccessful attempt at solving in 1958 contributed to his mental instability, as in Part 2.

The rite of manhood in Professor Rosser’s occupation, I suspect, be it mathematics applied to the Army’s interests or mathematics as difficult as the Riemann Hypothesis.

The year after Rosser’s publication of his computing work on the Riemann Hypothesis, i.e., in 1970 as in Part 4, the MRC under his directorship was the target of the most powerful U.S. domestic terror bombing up to that point, which killed a physicist, Robert Fassnacht.

The bombing was a part of anti-war protests persisting over the years against the Army-affiliated math center, with some protestors advocating for “A People’s Math Research Center”:

“During the years of protest against the war and against MRC, many persons wrote documents, pro or con, about the center’s activities in support of the Army. Among all of these, the one that stands out as probably the most comprehensive single presentation of the case against the center is a booklet called THE AMRC Papers, produced in 1973 by a group calling itself the Madison Collective of Science for the People. …”

…

The Booklet is organized in four parts, whose titles are

• How AMRC Helps the Army
• How AMRC Works
• AMRC’s Relationship with the University of Wisconsin
• An Alternative: A People’s Math Research Center

The part of most interest here is the first, which includes four chapters on specific areas in which it is alleged that MRC helped the Army. The titles of these chapters are Counterinsurgency, Chemical & Biological Warfare, Missile, and Conventional Weapons. … Indeed, many of the descriptions reported in these four chapters are taken directly from the reports of the center itself, and others from documents produced by military agencies. … this booklet was being sold in Madison at a time when some Army scientists responsible for oversight of the MRC contract were in town. Mindful of the difficulty they frequently encountered in persuading other Army officials that mathematical research was doing anything of real use to the Army, the scientists went out on the street and bought 40 copies of the booklet because it made such powerful arguments that MRC was in fact of great benefit in advancing the Army’s programs!”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

Mina Rees, a mathematician who had held management positions in the U.S. government research agencies, including with the applied mathematics panel of the National Defense Research Committee and as the head of the mathematics division at the Office of Naval Research, and who had played a key role in starting the NBS-sponsored INA at UCLA, expressed her strong opposition to the Army’s plan of directly involvement in an academic math research center:

“I think now rather with amusement of our feeling that the West Coast was somewhat underprivileged in — in this kind of development, but we did go to major universities all over the United States and it was after the visits to various places and an assessment of the degree of interest and the degree of involvement that the various universities were willing to undertake that we decided that the University of California at Los Angeles had the best chance of doing a – the kind of thing that we saw as needed, and I would think that we spent at least a year making that decision.

…

Yes. I think that was an outcome of discussions between John Curtiss and me, and one reason that we chose Southern California was that we thought that that was the place where we could get people to do that. Now the – what is it called – the Institute at Wisconsin – the Army Research – Mathematics Research Institute which had its troubles during the students’ uprisings some years later built on the same concept and tried to exploit the same attractiveness at having Army work done in a university. I was strongly opposed to that at that time, and I had no foresight- I don’t claim any foresight of what was going to happen later – but it just did not seem to me the right way to go about that problem, but it did seem to be the right: way to go about the development of solid mathematics.”

(“Interviewee: Mina Rees (1902-1997) Interviewer: Henry Tropp”, September 14, 1972, Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977, Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

There was “solid mathematics” done at the Army MRC at Wisconsin-Madison despite her strong opposition to the setup, as Rees later admitted in the above.

Moreover, the solid mathematics did not apply only to the military’s interests, but also in civilian industry.

Recall as previously quoted in Part 4, the significant achievements of Wisconsin-Madison mathematics professor Carl der Boor – SIAM’s 1996 John von Neumann Lecturer as cited earlier – in the development of the theory and applications of spline functions, which became “indispensible tools” in computer-aided design, and in auto and airplane manufacturing, among other industrial fields:

“… Splines were introduced in the 40’s (by the late I.J. Schoenberg of Wisconsin) as a means for approximating discrete data by curves. Their practical application was delayed almost twenty years until computers became powerful enough to handle the requisite computations. Since then they have become indispensible tools in computer-aided design and manufacture (cars and airplanes, in particular), in the production of printer’s typesets, in automated cartography… Carl is the worldwide leader and authority in the theory and applications of spline functions. … Carl has made Wisconsin-Madison a major international center in approximation theory and numerical analysis…”

(“Van Vleck Notes: Dedications, Honors and Awards …”, Fall 1997, Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin)

I. J. Schoenberg mentioned above, the founder of the mathematical theory of spline functions, had done some of his early work at the INA amidst a host of other researchers, including Derrick Lehmer, J. Barkley Rosser and David Saxon mentioned earlier, pursuing various subjects of their interests:

“THE PERIOD SUMMER 1951 THROUGH SPRING 1952

…

Research in the Mathematical Theory of Program Planning was carried enthusiastically by Motzkin, Agmon, Blumenthal, Gaddum, Schoenberg, and Walsh. During July and August a joint seminar was held with Rand on “Linear inequalities and related topics.” Invited speakers from outside were: A. W. Tucker, R. W. Shepherd, J. M. Danskin, S. Karlin, and R. E. Bellman.

Studies in numerical integration of ordinary and partial differential equations were pursued vigorously by Agmon, Bers, Fichera, and Wasow. … Rosser investigated the problem of computing low moments of normal order statistics. …

…

… Schoenberg pursued his theory of splines, a theory that has many useful applications.

Lehmer developed a practical method for obtaining the so-called Kloosterman Sums and investigated their properties. A series of tests for primality of Mersenne numbers were made on the SWAC, using a code sent in by R. M. Robinson of UC-Berkeley. …

Studies in theoretical physics were carried out by Saxon in cooperation with members of the Physics Department and other departments at UCLA …”

(Magnus R. Hestenes and John Todd, 1991, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

But it wasn’t until the mid-1960s at the MRC at Wisconsin-Madison that research in spline functions theory, “a theory that has many useful applications” as quoted above, flourished:

“Work on splines at MRC started in 1965 under the leadership of two permanent members, I. J. Schoenberg and T. N. E. Greville. The work evolved into a separate area in 1966 and continued for years thereafter. In fact, it probably is the case that spline functions are one of the best recognized of the mathematical advances that MRC brought about. …

…

… The contrast between the sustained success of the spline function subarea (benefiting from the continuous attention and organizational work of Schoenberg and later of Carl de Boor) and the sporadic nature of the other numerical analysis work provides a striking example of the importance of influential continuing staff in the development and sustenance of a research area.”

(Jagdish Chandra and Stephen M. Robinson, 2005, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics)

As quoted, spline functions became one of MRC’s “best recognized” successful research advances, whereas other numerical analysis work was “sporadic” in nature.

The direct funding, by U.S. defense research agencies, of mathematical research applicable to their interests continued to and during the 1980s, as can be seen in my situation when I was applying for graduate study in the U.S. and then studying for my mathematics Ph.D. at Berkeley, here as summarized from previous discussions in Part 4:

• in 1982 graduating from Sun Yat-sen University in China, Prof. Yuesheng Li who had supervised my undergraduate thesis in spline functions theory, suggested that I go to the MRC at Wisconsin-Madison to study with Carl de Boor, whose industry-applied research had been funded by the U.S. Army;
• when I chose UC Berkeley, Prof. Li suggested that I study with Alexander Chorin, whose ground-breaking research in computational fluid dynamics had been funded by the U.S. Navy;
• partly at the advice of Tosio Kato at Berkeley, I chose Stephen Smale, a prominent pure mathematician and former anti-war movement leader, to be my Ph.D. adviser, whose research had been funded by the National Science Foundation;
• Smale’s ambitious work to develop mathematical theories for numerical analysis was consistently dismissed by Berkeley numerical analysts, especially by Chorin, and Smale’s claims of his work being in applied mathematics were not accepted by those aligned with the numerical analysts.

From an industry point of view, the dominance of military influences in the early development of computers could be partly due to the ineptitude, or ineffectiveness, of the civilian sector, as seen in Berkeley Ph.D. and Silicon Valley pioneer Douglas Engelbart’s experience in the mid-1950s with Hewlett-Packard, discussed earlier.

IBM, which in 1956 started a research laboratory in San Jose as discussed earlier, hadn’t done that well, either:

“… IBM’s president from 1914 to 1956, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., had failed to recognize growing scientific and engineering demand for high-speed computing and visualized only a small market for the new electronic machines. Only under the patriotic cover of IBM’s support for the Korean War effort and through the leadership of Thomas J. Watson, Jr., did the firm manufacture its first computer, the Defense Calculator—IBM Model 701. The eighteen machines produced were oriented toward scientific use, with limited input/output equipment, and were all placed at government installations or with defense contractors. …”

(David O. Whitten and Bessie E. Whitten, eds., Manufacturing: A Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide, 1990, Greenwood Press)

Like with the invention of the first electronic computer ENIAC, war mobilization played a key role in the start of IBM computer manufacturing, during the Korean War era – despite the International Business Machines Corporation’s decades-long history in a closely related industrial field.

It is also interesting that the IBM San Jose research lab’s start coincided with the end of the over 4-decades-long reign of Thomas J. Watson, Sr. at IBM, in 1956 as quoted above.

Watson, who had adopted for IBM the alluring slogan, “World peace through world trade”, passed the reign to his son Thomas J. Watson, Jr., a month before his death in June 1956.

(“Thomas J. Watson: CEO 1914 – 1956”, International Business Machines Corporation)

Another industrial company was more eager than IBM.

I have quoted in Part 4 from an 2011 blog post, about Prof. Li in 1982 stressing to me the benefits of Carl de Boor’s General Motors connection:

“When I applied for graduate study in the United States Professor Li seriously recommended the U. S. Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison – Dr. Carl de Boor there and his General Motors connection were Professor Li’s favorite …”

(“Team Canada female athletes disqualified from Commonwealth silver medal, jailed Chinese democracy activist awarded with Nobel peace prize, and others in between (Part 3) – when violence and motive are subtle and pervasive”, March 29, 2011, Feng Gao’s Blog – Reflections on Events of Interest)

I had no knowledge of the specifics of Professor de Boor’s GM connection.

But there is something about Charles Wilson, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense who in 1953 dumped the National Bureau of Standards from the management of defense agency-funded projects.

Wilson had been promoted from the presidency of General Motors:

“Running on an anti-New Deal, pro-business, anti-corruption, anti-Communism platform, and featuring a pledge to end the Korean conflict, the Republican Eisenhower-Nixon ticket rode roughshod over the Stevenson-Sparkman Democrats, winning the White House as well as both houses of Congress. A changed philosophy of Government had been installed in Washington, one best exemplified by the nomination as secretary of defense of Charles (“Engine Charlie”) Wilson, president of General Motors, whose statement, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors and vice versa,” was added to the lexicon of the Nation’s political history.”

(Elio Passaglia with Karma A. Beal, 1999, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

Yup, what was good for the Army’s interests was probably good for General Motors, and “Charlie Engine” Wilson had more of that drive than Thomas Watson, Sr.

By 1981-1982 as I was applying to U.S. graduate schools and had discussions with Prof. Li, there was a General Motors senior executive with a prominent mathematical computing link in the family.

Marina von Neumann Whitman, General Motors vice president and chief economist beginning in 1979, was the daughter of the late “father of computers” who had spread his computer-building ‘gospel’ around the academia and scientific institutions; she had been the first woman ever to be on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, appointed by President Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s former vice president, in 1972:

“Whitman’s father, John von Neumann, is known for inventing Game Theory, pioneering developments in computer science and contributing to the Manhattan Project, among other achievements.

“This was a force to contend with,” Whitman said. “He was a wonderful father, but he put a lot of pressure on me to always be on the top of everything.”

Still, it’s safe to say she’s escaped her father’s shadow. She was the first woman to be appointed to the president’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1972, by President Richard Nixon. Whitman also served as vice president and chief economist of General Motors from 1979 to 1985 and group vice president for public affairs from 1985 to 1992.”

(“Marina von Neumann Whitman to read from new memoir ‘The Martian’s Daughter’”, by John Bohn, October 2, 2012, The Michigan Daily)

General Motors’ recognition of von Neumann Whitman’s talents was only logical, considering that in the 1950s Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson, the former GM president, had benefited greatly from her father’s advice, even at his hospital bedside in his last year of life:

“… At Walter Reed, where he was moved early last spring, an Air Force officer, Lieut. Colonel Vincent Ford, worked full time assisting him. Eight airmen, all cleared for top secret material, were assigned to help on a 24-hour basis. His work for the Air Force and other government departments continued. Cabinet members and military officials continually came for his advice, and on one occasion Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson, Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles and most of the top Air Force brass gathered in Von Neumann’s suite to consult his judgment while there was still time. …”

(Clay Blair, Jr., February 25, 1957, Volume 42, Number 8, Life)

Ironically, the earlier experiences of Marina von Neumann, entering the real world, included being turned down for a job prospect at IBM, where her late father had been a consultant, and being invited to apply and then rejected for Ph.D. study at Princeton University, where her father had been famous – for rather unusual personal reasons:

“She remembers one contentious exchange after Whitman told her father that she planned to get married upon graduating college.

“He had a fit,” Whitman said. “He thought that this would be the death knell for any professional ambitions I might have. And in the 1950s, he was statistically right, but he was wrong about me.”

…

Using two distinct anecdotes, Whitman’s second focus in the book is how society has changed during her lifetime. In the first, she describes how she was turned down for a prospective job opportunity at IBM because the recruiter saw she was engaged to be married.

…

The second anecdote discusses Whitman’s application to Princeton University for a Ph.D. in economics; the economics department invited her to apply, yet turned her down for a simple reason.

“I went to see the president (of Princeton). And what the conversation boiled down to was, ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs. Whitman, we can accept a student of your caliber, but we just don’t have enough ladies’ rooms.’ ”

(John Bohn, October 2, 2012, The Michigan Daily)

Marina Whitman is now a professor of business administration and public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

(““The Martian’s Daughter” by Marina von Neumann Whitman”, October 2, 2012, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan)

(Part 5 continues in (ii))