Hall of Fame members from 2008 and earlier, along with their biographies, are listed below. More recent recipients are on the main Hall of Fame overview page.
2008: David Golden — Ken-ichi Inouye — Kinney Thiele — Peter Hart — Bob Dehn
2007: There were no inductees in 2007
2006: Bill English — Jeff Rulifson — Carl Spetzler
2005: Catherine Ailes — John P. McHenry — Charles Tyson
2004: Charles A. Spindt — Robert Stewart — Shigeyoshi Takaoka — Masato Tanabe
2003: Jack Goldberg — Marion Hill — Earle Jones — Peter Lim — William Royce
2002: Mike Frankel — Paul Jorgensen — Donn Parker
2001: George Abrahamson — Dale Coulson — Philip Green — Kitta Reeds — Carl Titus
2000: Hewitt D. Crane — William C. Estler — Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler — Douglas D. Keough — Kenneth E. Lunde — Donald L. Nielson
1999: Richard B. Foster — John V. N. Granger —Melba Harrison — Richard C. Honey — Ralph Krause — Thomas H. Morrin — Jerre Noe — Allen Peterson — Lorraine Pratt — Don R. Scheuch — Ronald Swidler - Mike Villard
1988 and earlier: Bill Baker — Emery Bator — Fran Bohley — Charles Cook — Bonnar Cox — George Duvall — Kenneth Eldredge — Douglas Engelbart — William Evans — Dennis Finnigan — Gustave Freeman — Weldon Gibson — Jane Goelet — Bruce Graham — Chuck Hilly — Jesse Hobson — Fred Kamphoefner — Ray Leadabrand — Albert Macovski —Frank Mayo — Joseph McPherson — Arnold Mitchell — Chozo Mitoma — Tetsu Morita — Jean Nelson — Gordon Newell — Nils Nilsson — William Platt — Thomas Poulter — Ed Robison — Charles Rosen — Robert Shreve — William Skinner — Felix Smith — Robert Smith — Mimi Stearns — Lawrence Swift — Robert Vaile — John Wagner
Dave Golden came to SRI in 1963 to work with Sid Benson on thermochemical kinetics and very low-pressure pyrolysis techniques. He began by helping to actually construct their labs from some idle space in the basement of Building 1, as it was known then, and when he left SRI in 1998, he was known internationally as a leader in applying chemical kinetics to the protection of the atmosphere. His career at SRI included a series of increasing leadership roles. He became director of the Thermochemical Kinetics group in 1976. He built up the group whose work attracted both international recognition and strong projects that were a vital part of SRI’s science programs. He was director of the Chemistry Laboratory beginning in 1988, followed by promotion to the Vice Presidency of Physical Sciences in 1991.
Although Dave Golden always had a passion for fundamental chemical kinetics research, he also had a keen eye for the practical. Shortly after the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, it was proposed that chlorine activation on polar stratospheric clouds could be a key step in the ozone loss mechanism. He immediately realized that his group at SRI could make an important contribution by measuring the kinetics of chlorine-nitrate reactions on ice surfaces representative of polar stratospheric clouds. Bringing together researchers from various laboratories, including Maggie Tolbert, Michel Rossi and Ripu Malhotra, and with only internal SRI funding to keep things going, Dave Golden coordinated experiments using a Knudsen cell reactor, which showed that, indeed, chlorine reacted readily with nitrates on ice surfaces under polar stratospheric conditions to form gaseous chlorine and condensed nitric acid. The gaseous chlorine was then poised to destroy ozone when sunlight returned in the Austral spring. This work represented an important link in unraveling how the Antarctic ozone hole is formed.
The paper on this work shared the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Award for the best paper in Science for 1987-1988 with a paper on a similar subject by the 1995 Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina and coworkers.
For 35 years at SRI, Dave Golden was a leader in advancing thermochemical research while recruiting and mentoring others to advance that knowledge even further. These scientists carried SRI’s reputation throughout the world. Dave Golden made a lasting contribution to SRI in the number of people who grew professionally under his leadership. He left SRI the legacy of a strong reputation for applying basic science to real world problems and a continuing chain of scientists who train new scientists all over the world.
Ken-ichi Inouye joined SRI Japan in August 1980, in the early years of this office, as a business development manager. Since he came from Hokushin Electric, the third largest instrument manufacturer in Japan at that time, the projects he developed mostly contributed to the revenue of the Advanced Technology Division, the commercial sector of the Engineering Group. The projects he sold were unusually large, such as an early commercial project he developed for $3 million.
Ken Inouye had the skills needed to make prospective clients rely on the quality of the innovative technologies developed by SRI. He built up firm and continuing relationships with many major Japanese manufacturers. His most notable contribution to SRI was building a firm business relation between SRI and the Japanese electric appliances/electronic devices industry including companies such as Panasonic, Toshiba, and Sharp. Through his efforts, managers of many Japanese companies in this industry drew on the research capabilities of SRI, and they are still bringing many repeated projects to SRI today, even after Inouye’s retirement. That is one of his lasting contributions to SRI.
Another of Ken Inouye’s lasting contributions to SRI was his ability to bring license fee benefits to SRI based on technology development projects. For example, SRI still receives license fee revenue from the PCB removal technology by thermal cracking, which was developed for and transferred to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
When the David Sarnoff Research Center joined SRI, Ken Inouye organized seminars to present Sarnoff’s capability by bringing speakers to many prospective clients, together with visual panels that demonstrated Sarnoff’s activity. These seminars resulted in appreciable sales of Sarnoff projects to Japanese industry. Sharp was one of the clients that awarded large contracts for many years. Because of the success of these seminars, SRI Japan still relies on the seminar arrangement as a powerful tool for promotion.
These continued strong relations with Japanese industry, the continued benefits of licensing fees, and innovative marketing techniques constitute Ken Inouye’s legacy to SRI.
For well over a decade, the voice an inquiring person heard when calling SRI was that of Kinney Thiele. Her professional manner and her encyclopedic knowledge of SRI gave the outside world an assurance that their needs were being met as well as they could be.
Kinney Thiele came to SRI as a secretary in 1976 and, except for a two and one-half year stint in the Peace Corps, remained at SRI nearly thirty years. During that time, she continually sought new challenges and progressed through ten title changes and levels of responsibility that ultimately gave her extensive knowledge of SRI. Notable in that growth were important contributing roles such as coordinating the clients of SRI’s successful Decision Analysis Group.
Kinney Thiele parlayed her love for Africa, developed in the Peace Corps, to materially assist SRI’s largest African project, which trained personnel of the copper mines of Zambia. With great sensitivity and compassion, she helped many African trainees feel welcome here in Menlo Park.
Above all else was the helpful image of SRI Kinney Thiele gave to the outside world on the Inquiry Line. She respectfully thought of all callers as potential customers and worked smoothly to connect them with appropriate SRI staff. She was an ideal person for this role because she knew virtually all the projects and key people at SRI, including many of their skills and their experience base. Combining her respectful attitude with her wide knowledge, she successfully conveyed untold contract opportunities to SRI staff.
As recounted by a staff member, here is the epitome of Kinney Thiele’s skill. The inquiry went something like this: “Three or four months ago, I met a gray haired gentleman from SRI on a plane from London to San Francisco. I have lost his card but need to speak to him urgently. He was on his way home from someplace in Africa.” Within minutes, a connection was made; in three weeks, the SRI staff member was on a plane to Kazakhstan. From this vague telephone inquiry, SRI won a $1.2 million contract.
For this notable role and for representing SRI so well to so many, Kinney Thiele is well deserving of this election into the SRI Alumni Hall of Fame.
During the fifteen years Peter Hart was at SRI International, the last several of which he was head of the Artificial Intelligence Center, he provided research leadership while making fundamental contributions to the fields of pattern recognition, machine vision, and artificial intelligence.
Peter Hart’s early research at SRI, with Dick Duda, led to the world’s first use of context in optical character recognition and to the development of one of the most widely used algorithms in image analysis. Their book, Pattern Classification and Scene Analysis, is the ninth most-cited reference in the field of computer science.
Peter Hart led the Shakey robot project (started by Charlie Rosen in 1966) during its peak performance years in the early 1970s. He co-invented (with Nils Nilsson and Bert Raphael) the A* route-finding algorithm that is used in all of today’s automobile-based and web-based navigation systems as well as in video game software. A Shakey paper he co-authored with Nils Nilsson and Rich Fikes has been described as the most republished paper in the history of artificial intelligence.
Peter Hart is a Fellow of the IEEE, the ACM, the AAAI, and the Rensselaer Alumni Society. CiteseerX reports over 6,000 citations of his work, apparently among the most of any party or current SRI computer scientist.
In the late 1970s, Peter Hart spearheaded the development of the PROSPECTOR system for mineral exploration. This was the world’s first expert system with proven performance on an economically important problem, and it launched expert systems as a commercial activity.
On the Federal science policy front, Peter Hart served as an advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Administrator of NASA, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command.
After leaving SRI, Peter Hart went on to co-found four companies and to direct two research centers, but his contributions while at SRI greatly enhanced the reputation of SRI and paved the way for the continuing excellence and renown of its Artificial Intelligence Center.
Bob Dehn, Marketing Director for Biosciences, combined his market understanding and insight to team with SRI research leaders in creating a new, vital, and sustaining business model for Biosciences and SRI at large. His leadership resulted in important new programs for every SRI division, strategic partnerships that provided access to new markets and a new source of intellectual property, and new ways of doing business that are a lasting contribution for SRI.
Bob Dehn’s knowledge of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), especially during the NIH budget doubling from 1999 to 2004, had every division at SRI interested in entering that market. He worked one-on-one and through his leadership of the NIH Initiative (one of the most successful institute-level investment programs in SRI’s history) to help all those eager to explore possibilities. He was the first to see the opportunity, lead an SRI-wide group to conduct an aggressive and proactive marketing campaign, and form a series of strategic partnerships. These partnerships were a major divergence from our past teaming when we would simply wait for a small business to approach us. His careful market analysis showed a series of very large opportunities where we could team with others in markets we had never entered before to gain research dollars as well as intellectual property.
The results were astounding. While NIH’s budget grew two-fold, Biosciences grew three-fold. Their growth was not only in grants—the traditional backbone of Biosciences—but in major contract work. This change in portfolio mix and business model had lasting effects for profitability and growth. Not only did his leadership benefit Biosciences, Bob Dehn was also successful in getting NIH research projects for the Engineering Science Division, Policy, the Information and Computer Science Division, and the Physical Sciences Division. By being proactive and targeted, SRI won work and formed partnerships that 10 years later are still productive.
Bob Dehn helped bring Biosciences to the forefront of biodefense research, which not only added research dollars, but also brought NIH funding for the construction of animal facilities and new microbiology laboratories. He was instrumental in adding new research areas, such as vaccine research, which now supports a vigorous new SRI vaccine research group focused on infectious disease.
Bob Dehn’s market understanding and vision along with significant business acumen have indeed resulted in lasting contributions to the success of SRI.
2007: There were no inductees in 2007
Bill English joined SRI in the very early 1960s to work on magnetic devices. At SRI he became interested in their use as logic devices, which led to his building one of the first all-magnetic arithmetic units with Hew Crane.
The principal reason behind this Hall of Fame award, however, lies in his accomplishments in helping define the earliest expressions of personal computing. The first person to join Engelbart’s lab in 1964, he became the hardware architect of one of the first truly interactive computing systems. Relying on developments in the evolving world of timeshare computers, he led the fabrication and assemblage of those hardware elements needed to demonstrate a revolutionary capability we now call personal computing.
He also led a 1965 NASA project that evaluated the best means to select a point on a computer display. That proved to be the mouse, which Bill had a major role in creating. To meet the continuous need for monitoring computer input/output, he integrated instantly responsive electronic displays that became a cornerstone in interactive computing. This assemblage of equipment would become the basis for one of the most important events in the history of computing, a 90-minute live demonstration before the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco’s Civic Center Auditorium.
Although it was Doug who convinced the conference leaders to allow the demonstration, it was Bill who designed the means to connect a terminal in the San Francisco Civic Auditorium to its host at SRI, 30 miles away in Menlo Park. The connection would accommodate not only the digital data that needed to be passed but also the audio and video channels that would enable the first demonstration of a real time collaborative environment for two computer users. This moment was a true watershed in the history of computing and Bill was the principal person that pulled it together. Bill left SRI in 1971 to follow the rapidly growing personal computing field elsewhere. His accomplishments at SRI truly altered the future of computing, however, making him clearly deserving of this Hall of Fame award.
Jeff came to SRI in 1966 to work on some newly won projects being undertaken by Doug Engelbart and soon came to lead the software development for a new and dramatically different computing capability. This new capability involved the integration of an emerging class of hardware called timesharing and some evolving software unique to SRI. In response to Engelbart’s vision, Jeff and others created a highly responsive, computer-mediated, collaborative work environment. This new continuously-responsive computer environment would define, for the first time anywhere, much of what we think of as computing today.
The remarkable capability of the collaborative system was demonstrated at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco live before hundreds of people. To assure that it would work in such a prestigious and public forum, and over the protestations of his feature-hatching boss, he froze the software one month before the event. To assure success, Jeff and a colleague also built a very early dynamic recovery process so that any system failure would not likely be noticed. This recovery feature rescued them at least once that day. The historic event went successfully and the world saw for the first time an uninterrupted real-time display of a host of software-enabled features that included: on- line file creation and editing, window formation, hypertext linking, the mouse, remote online collaboration aided by audio and video conferencing, and much more. That demonstration was a watershed moment in the history of computing and Jeff, Bill English, and Doug Engelbart, were honored with a special ACM award in 1990 for these contributions
For his part in this historic change to the nature of computing, for his role in the formative days of the world’s first computer network, the ARPANET, and for writing one of the first machine-independent computer languages, we are proud to honor him.
Since its earliest days, SRI has endeavored to bring innovation into the business world. A key innovation, from Stanford University, was decision analysis. In 1968, Carl and others formed a Decision Analysis Program in the Business Group. Eventually growing to 20 members, it successfully provided this problem-solving and planning discipline to SRI clients for 14 years. During this period, Carl focused on applying decision analysis to the intricate, sometimes entangled, world of strategic management.
Carl is also responsible for one innovation that truly changed the American financial landscape. In 1974, at the suggestion of Charles Anderson, Carl started a new program that would bring his analytical skills to the world of financial services. To learn the financial habits of the general public, he initiated a broad multiclient study of how the typical American family interacted with the available financial services. This study revealed a highly fractured, inertia-bound world that was clearly ripe for overhaul and simplification. Average affluent households dealt with as many as 20 different financial service vendors involving nearly twice that many products.
That clarity, unfolding in the latter part of the 1970s, together with insight that came from a careful reading of the banking laws of the day, convinced Carl and his group that all those products could be integrated under a single vendor, in this case, Merrill Lynch. Although Merrill Lynch strongly resisted such a sweeping and unsettling change, SRI convinced its president that they should offer such a one-stop financial service, called the Cash Management Account (CMA). For the first time an investor could deal with a single vendor and see a single, integrated financial statement. Banks challenged the approach around the country, but SRI’s work was sound and by the mid-1980s more than 1 million CMA customers used CMAs.
This Hall of Fame award is presented for Carl’s leadership in the growth of decision analysis at SRI, and for his key role in instigating a fundamental change in the U.S. financial service industry.
Cathie Ailes was a leading contributor to the field of science and technology public policy, a strong manager, and a devoted member of the SRI family. As the Director of the Science and Technology Policy Program in SRI/Washington, her reach extended globally and broke new ground in creating innovative methods for assessing science and technology programs.
Cathie Ailes started at SRI in 1975 as an analyst for Dick Foster on national security issues including the Soviet Bloc. When Foster’s group was disbanding, she transitioned into science and technology (S&T) assessments involving, first, the Soviet Union, then expanded into assessments in other parts of the world. She became one of the two or three top program evaluators for the National Science Foundation, including creating roadmaps for S&T development.
Her national and international evaluations required multidimensional methodologies, including surveys, focus groups, literature reviews, other quantitative analyses as well as site visit interviews, case studies, and peer review panels. She assessed federal programs to enhance research and education at U.S. universities, compared international scientific and technical personnel studies, evaluated federal international cooperative science and technology programs; and analyzed statistics and data related to science, technology, and educational policy issues.
Early on, she used a small core of SRI people and several outside people to form the competent teams needed for this work. Later, she grew the SRI staff that now stands at about 14 people. She helped them broaden to other clients like NIST, DOE, and now NASA. That group is now one of the top three policy evaluation groups in the nation.
In the five years before her death in the summer of 2005, Ailes conducted site visit interviews and focus groups at some 25 colleges and universities across the United States and with government, academic, and industry representatives in a dozen other countries.
Cathie Ailes developed an incredible trust in all her clients to the point that they would tell stories to others about her achievements. She had an uncanny ability to form personal relationships with her clients. She left SRI the legacy of these clients and an internationally respected group of analysts.
John McHenry laid a foundation of technology, staff, and operating principles that have had a lasting and positive effect on SRI. Research areas such as instrumentation and simulation, radar technologies, and classified programs nurtured by John are still flourishing today. He also trained many of today’s engineering staff, from VP level individuals to project and task leaders.
When John McHenry first came to SRI, he worked on radar and ballistic missile detection technologies. However, following the end of the Vietnam War, he recognized an important area of research and development for the US Military: combat training systems. Soldiers being deployed were inadequately trained for the environments they would be facing. In response, McHenry established a research program at SRI built around the use of advanced technology for military combat training systems. Beginning in 1972, he grew the program, first into a center and later into a division.
John brought the discipline of systems engineering to SRI. He added staff and capabilities in systems engineering to augment the research and technology development and provide greater value and capability to our clients. He also had a significant role in developing classified programs in support of national security. Bringing together staff from multiple disciplines and groups, McHenry led major programs that delivered important national security capabilities, particularly in surveillance and reconnaissance applications.
John McHenry had a vision for a technology delivery capability that went beyond pure research. He carried his vision forward when he became Vice President of the Systems Development Division in 1986, when he moved over to become Vice President of the Advanced Development Division in 1990, and finally when he became Senior Vice President of the Engineering Research Group in 1992. His emphasis on delivery of technology helped open up many new business areas.
McHenry had a lasting impact on staff at SRI. He was a mentor to many and led by example. If there was a difficult technical problem, he got involved to help craft a solution. If there was a pressing deadline, he was always there with the team for as many hours or days that it took. The staff still seeks his help and counsel today. John McHenry had a distinguished career at SRI, leaving a positive legacy in the Engineering Research area.
Charlie Tyson was one of the foremost leaders in the development of in vitro methods of studying the toxicity and metabolism of drugs. He made critical research contributions that established a solid foundation from which this in vitro research has emerged into a totally separate discipline area of toxicology. In his 28 years at SRI, Charlie served as the principal investigator on major multi-year research grants and contracts totaling greater than $30 million.
Charlie Tyson joined SRI in 1977 as a senior biochemist, working on projects in toxicology and pharmacology with James Dilley, Chozo Mitoma, and others. But his vision was to develop in vitro models for toxicity studies, using human tissues to avoid some of the problems involved in use of animals to predict human effects. In 1981, this task began when he was awarded several new grants and contracts from NIH and EPA to develop in vitro models of toxicity and drug metabolism.
Carol Green joined him at that time, she says, to figure out how Tyson, with little in vitro models experience and no NIH track record, had just won three large grants. What she learned was that Charlie Tyson had great persistence, intelligence, drive, and the ability to inspire others. The group’s work under Charlie Tyson’s direction led to in vitro assays that are now routinely used by pharmaceutical companies to select new drug candidates.
Charlie Tyson served as the Associate Director of the Toxicology Laboratory from 1990-1998, bringing in many new clients and large multidisciplinary contracts that were critical to the laboratory’s success. One major success was a long-shot contract for NCI toxicology studies, which has now been renewed for the third time and continues to provide major funding for the Biosciences Division.
In 1997, Charlie began his "semi-retirement" phase. He had recently won a new research grant to expand his work on a lung toxicity model and his team was making excellent progress on an in vitro liver model that could be used to identify drugs with a potential for serious side-effects before treating patients. In 1999, he was awarded the SRI Fellowship for his research accomplishments. He used the Fellowship funds to write new proposals and was successful again. He hired staff and began what continues today as the Advanced In Vitro Toxicology Program. Charlie Tyson was greatly respected by his many colleagues, both at SRI and around the world.
Somewhere between the cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) so common in electronic displays and the solid-state circuits that drive them lies the technology of vacuum microelectronics. Here arrays of extremely small charged-particle emitters are housed in thin vacuum chambers to perform many electronic functions. Central to these devices are tiny cone-shaped cathodes, so sharp that the energy required to emit electrons from their tips is very small and the emitting process is called field or cold cathode emission. This technology was invented at SRI over 40 years ago, and the world has no better expert or practitioner in this field than Capp Spindt. In fact, these small emitters are known everywhere as "Spindt cathodes."
Spindt joined SRI in 1959 and in 1966, he invented and developed processes for microfabricating gated arrays of field-emission cathode tips. These very efficient, cold cathodes have been the enabling technology for a new technical field dedicated to applying microfabrication techniques to vacuum devices and for a rekindled interest in vacuum devices within the scientific community. Spindt cathodes are used for flat-panel displays of incredible brightness, in microwave amplifiers, in electron-beam etching in the building of integrated circuits, and for many space applications. Spindt also championed the efforts to develop microfabricated field ionization sources, which have been used as the ionization source for nonfragmenting mass spectrometry of large molecular-weight compounds and can be used in diverse applications ranging from spacecraft propulsion to biomedical analytic instrumentation.
As the world discovered the Spindt cathode’s utility, Spindt helped found the ongoing worldwide conferences on vacuum microelectronics that this year will see its 17th annual meeting. He contributes to world understanding of vacuum micro- electronics by many positions on committees and editorial boards as well as by delivering invited lectures all over the world. In 1990, he received his Ph.D. and in 1992, he was honored as an SRI Fellow. In 1996, the Society for Information Displays awarded Spindt the Jan Rajchman Prize for inventing and developing field-emission flat-panel displays using micro-tip structures.
Capp Spindt’s legacy to SRI is this broadly useful technology -- the subject of active SRI projects -- as well as his continuing contribution to world understanding of vacuum microelectronics.
Robert F. Stewart was an innovator in the field of business planning. Under his leadership, from early 1962 and extending into much of the 1970s, SRI developed a broadly applicable framework for formal organizational planning. The method has been widely and successfully used to align a corporation’s various developmental and operational units with its overall strategic directions.
SRI’s first foray into this field came in 1962 with the formation of a group under SRI’s Long Range Planning Service (LRPS) called TAPP, for the Theory and Practice of Planning. Stewart, who had developed some ideas on corporate planning at Lockheed, joined SRI that same year to lead the new group. He then initiated an important series of LRPS reports on planning. This series distilled into what came to be known as the SRI System of Plans that became widely copied and adapted in corporate circles.
These SRI contributions to new methods for corporate planning began in response to requests from LRPS clients who were pleased with SRI’s information on what to plan for but wanted help in knowing how to plan. As principal author of the LRPS planning reports and of the planning framework itself, Stewart influenced a wide range of executives in the world’s major corporations. The reports were often supplemented by week-long seminars, sponsored by the corporate attendees and conducted in both the United States and Europe. Led by Stewart and including SRI colleagues such as Al Humphrey, Manuel Sotomayor, Bill Royce, Carl Spetzler, Joe McPherson, plus other SRI and guest speakers, some 35 such seminars attracted over 500 different companies between 1965 to 1971.
Incidentally, the first printed use of "stakeholders" appeared in one of Stewart’s reports, entitled "The Strategic Plan" dated April 1963. This term for a person who has a natural interest in the results of an enterprise caught on and has been widely used both within the business community and elsewhere.
Thus, Robert Stewart contributions to organizational planning played a major role in developing SRI’s commercial business and in enhancing SRI’s reputation worldwide.
Shigeyoshi Takaoka, generally called Tak, built SRI’s business in Asia in the 1970s and created for SRI a legacy of long-running contracts and client good will that continue to this day.
Takaoka joined SRI in 1966 as a senior chemical engineer working on projects for the Chemical Economics Handbook in Menlo Park. In 1974, he was transferred to the SRI Tokyo Office, and in 1976 he was promoted to the position of Director, SRI International East Asia. He served in this position for ten years. During the years of his management of SRI East Asia, Takaoka’s ability to grow and develop SRI business was really outstanding. When he came to SRI’s Tokyo office, the number of staff was only two or three; when he left, it was more than thirty. The annual sales grew from $2 million in the beginning year of his activity to more than $20 million in his last year. During this period, the office was moved from a floor in a building owned by Nomura to a floor in the Imperial Towers, a building owned by the Imperial Hotel. This move helped to increase the status and reputation of SRI in Japan.
Examples of Japanese companies that became long term SRI clients include Osaka Gas, Isuzu, Sharp, and Toshiba. Japanese government agencies included NEDO and AIST. These working relationships lasted for many years with contracts being renewed year after year. Some of the relationships are still active to the present day.
Takaoka was very skillful in managing the team of SRI Japan. He actively encouraged the working activity of his team through his business leadership. He also activated people’s feelings through many recreational events such as golf and tennis tournaments. These events created a family-like teamwork throughout the office, bringing about the excellent business performance of SRI East Asia.
Takaoka’s excellent leadership has given SRI a strong position in Japan and continuing revenue and client good will throughout Asia.
Masato (Mas) Tanabe is a world-renowned scientist. He was recognized as an SRI Fellow in 1984 for his innovations in steroid hormone therapeutics. He also helped develop SRI’s long-term and beneficial relationships with the Japanese pharmaceutical industry.
Tanabe was program manager of Steroid Chemistry group, then director of SRI's Bio-Organic Chemistry Laboratory for much of his career, and later the director of SRI's Pharmaceutical Chemistry group. He devoted 45 years to the study of steroid hormones. Because of the outstanding talent of this group and Tanabe’s leadership, many outstanding contributions to excellent steroid chemistry and drug development were made at SRI. The culmination of this work is the successful development of the drug SR 16234 to be used in the treatment of breast cancer. The goal in developing this drug was to create a very tissue-selective estrogen that would act like an anti-estrogen in the breast and uterus but would appear as normal estrogen to bones and other responsive tissue. The drug can be taken orally, thus substantially lowering the cost of administration. The drug, licensed to Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Tokyo, has already successfully completed Phase I trials, is finishing Phase II, and has the potential to become a very effective drug against breast cancer. During the past six years of development, Tanabe has been the "Drug Champion" of SR 16234.
Tanabe visited Japan and promoted SRI business there for many years, establishing a strong reputation for SRI as well as his own steroid program. He fostered extensive postdoctoral and international fellowships at SRI in which he trained many Japanese scientists. These students then became very distinguished in their own right as worldwide experts in steroids and in the biosynthesis of natural products. In 2001, Tanabe was awarded the Japanese Pharmaceutical Society’s Distinguished Service Award for a long history of helping Japanese academic scientists and companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical fields. In particular, the award recognized his dedication to the scientific exchange represented by the 45 scientists who have come to SRI to study under him. He is the first person outside of Japan to win this honor.
Mas Tanabe leaves SRI a legacy of enormous advances in steroid chemistry and drug development -- representing a robust portfolio of high-value intellectual property -- as well the strong relationship SRI enjoys with the Japanese pharmaceutical industry because of his research and the many students he nurtured.
Jack Goldberg was responsible for the early, innovative design of computer prototypes and software that led to the rigor and reliability of today’s computers. The computer sciences group he headed in 1966 would become SRI’s Computer Sciences Laboratory, which has achieved a worldwide reputation as one of the most noted labs in computer science.
Jack Goldberg arrived at SRI in 1951, in time to begin work on SRI’s first large project, ERMA. The challenge was to build a special computer for the Bank of America to handle all the usual banking functions, but focusing on the rapidly growing check-processing operations. Jack Goldberg’s major role in ERMA was logic design, a craft that was emerging along with the origin of computers themselves. Jack Goldberg, Bart Cox, and Bill Kautz were responsible for the logic design of the world’s first banking computer. Having struggled with this task, they realized that computer design lacked a scientific underpinning. Within the newly formed Computer Techniques Lab (CTL), Jack Goldberg and Bill Kautz concentrated on how best to use the unreliable parts, including early transistors, to design and build computers.
By 1969, Jack Goldberg was Manager of the Computer Sciences Group. Under his leadership, the group continued to focus on the question of fault tolerance: how to ensure that the computer would continue to function in the presence of failing parts. One solution was to embody in software the ability to recover from hardware failure. Although the group was blessed with a cadre of talent, Jack Goldberg continued to hire a splendid array of additional people lured by the new and inviting challenge of designing software such that its correctness could be proved mathematically. By 1976 the group had grown sufficiently to become the Computer Science Laboratory with Jack Goldberg as its Director. The reputation of the Lab grew to worldwide prominence and soon developed the world’s most advanced program verification system called HDM. CSL went on to look into the problem of computer security and the design of software languages themselves, including ADA.
The Computer Science laboratory is still one of the world’s most noted labs in computer science, continuing in the formal methods of software design and proof and in computer security systems. It continues to attract computer software and security specialists, who come from around the world to learn or to stay.
Marion Hill founded SRI’s highly successful program on the synthesis of explosive and energetic compounds and was director of the Chemistry Laboratory for 18 years. Both these groups are still enriching SRI both scientifically and financially. Marion Hill was recruited to SRI in 1960 by Tom Poulter, who was attracted by Marion Hill’s distinguished career at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory (NOL) where he was honored by NOL for developing new high energy fuels for Polaris missiles.
At SRI, Marion Hill organized a small synthesis group, initially to provide energetic materials for United Technology. During the following five years, his group of two expanded to a department of twelve, conducting basic and applied research on energetic materials for half a dozen federal agencies including NOL, ONR, AFOSR, and LLNL as well as Lockheed. Many of the programs were done under contracts lasting 10 to 15 years and resulted in major contributions to new propulsion and explosive systems used during the Cold War. The ONR program developed basic understanding of NF2 compounds; work for the AF Rocket Laboratory led to discovery of NF4+ and the LLNL-supported research on nitrofluoro alcohols provided novel compounds used for missile fuels.
Marion Hill’s legacy, the energetic materials program, continues in 2003 to contribute to national defense as well as to SRI’s reputation and financial health. The important work of Jeff Bottaro and coworkers in the discovery of new, safer explosives and propellants such ammonium dinitramide (ADN) has also led to commercial licenses to several companies around the world.
The Chemistry Laboratory was founded by Marion Hill in 1967 to integrate in one research organization many groups doing chemical research at SRI. Under his leadership, the laboratory grew to over 100 scientists, who were not just widely respected in the scientific community, but produced almost $20 million in net income on contracts worth about $70 million before Marion Hill retired in 1984. The Chemistry Laboratory is another of Marion Hill’s legacies, now represented by several laboratories in Physical Sciences that continue to contribute to SRI’s reputation for strong scientific achievement.
Earle Jones brought to SRI all the talents that could be hoped for in a researcher, a manager, and a promoter of SRI’s expertise. He was well respected for his technical innovation, for his vigor as a division leader, for his excellent rapport with top-level commercial clients, and for his ability to create a new stream of commercial revenue from international clients, especially in Asia. In all these roles, Earle Jones displayed a quality that can only be described as charm.
Earle Jones joined SRI in 1956. In the 1960s, he came up with a valuable invention for Monsanto. His idea was to build a frequency synthesizer, which Monsanto patented, made, and sold successfully. He and his group developed early copier and fax systems as an R&D arm of Savin Business Machines. Earle Jones also recognized early the benefits of spinning off SRI’s innovations. He was active in spin-off and subsidiary committees, and from 1983 to 1986, he took a leave of absence to work for Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC), an early SRI spin-off that focused on linking handwriting and Chinese characters to the computer.
Earle Jones’s leadership skills led to his rapid rise into management. He had an impressive ability to work closely with his project managers and with top-level commercial clients who wanted new ideas and products explored, developed, and exploited as marketable capabilities. By 1977, he was Executive Director of the Information Science and Engineering Division, which evolved to become the Advance Development Division. This division, known for its excellent work and many patents for commercial clients, frequently formed interdisciplinary teams that worked with the business consulting parts of SRI.
Earle Jones was especially effective in international markets. In 1979, he started the Micro Electronics Technology Program in Europe and later represented SRI in the London Office. As Executive Director of SRI Asia in 1986-1987, he helped to expand project revenues from Japanese clients. In 1988, as Regional Marketing Director of Korea, Earle Jones opened an SRI office in Seoul. Here, he promoted SRI and started a new project revenue stream for both SRI and Sarnoff.
The talents of Earle Jones gave SRI a strong foundation in commercial projects that have gained the respect of both domestic and international clients for SRI’s ability to take an idea from concept, through exploration and development, to the marketplace
Peter Lim holds the records for the longest-running project in the history of SRI. His analytical chemistry project for the National Cancer Institute, started in 1956, is still going strong after almost 50 years.
After receiving his Ph.D. at the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1956, Peter Lim joined Stanford Research Institute to work with B. R. Baker, who had just arrived from the Southern Research Institute to start a program for the synthesis of new potential anticancer agents sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). At that time, infrared (IR) spectroscopy was just emerging as an extremely useful technique for identifying structures of organic molecules. Peter Lim became an expert in the analysis of IR spectra and used that capability to analyze all the reaction products of new molecules generated by 12-15 organic chemists in SRI’s cancer group.
In about 1956, an organizational change occurred at NCI, and all analytical chemistry was spun off from the synthesis program and funded as a separate contract. Peter applied for and received this major NCI analytical project, which continues to this day under the leadership of senior chemists trained by Peter. This was the start of the analytical chemistry group in Life Sciences. Peter Lim served as the group’s leader, and in 1979, he became Director of the Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis in the Life Sciences Division. For over 25 years, he maintained a staff of 10 to 15 chemists at a sold time greater than 90%.
Other significant analytical programs brought to SRI under Peter’s leadership included a project from the Walter Reed Institute to analyze antimalarial compounds and a project from the U.S. Army for analyzing chemical defense agents. These projects also continue to this day. In addition, many short-term commercial projects were obtained as a result of Peter’s expertise and reputation for quality work.
Peter Lim’s legacy to SRI is his demonstration of the kind of excellent work that it takes to continue to satisfy the needs of a major client over many years—a talent crucial to the continued success of SRI.
Bill Royce is a truly dedicated SRI staff member, who for thirty years contributed both to important project substance and to the leadership of SRI’s marketing offices. He was a business economist with great insight into economic fundamentals and the value of solid, practical planning as well as a very congenial representative of SRI. His work continues to influence SRI programs and economies around the world.
Bill Royce came to SRI in 1954 as the head of a new office in Portland, Oregon. Within a year or so, he was engaged in the economic planning and site selection for the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and was traveling the country to assess the functions that had led to the financial success of existing venues like the Met and Carnegie Hall. The resulting SRI recommendation for a multi-unit facility influenced both the final design of the offerings of the Kennedy Center and its site at Watergate. In 1957 Bill Royce helped the Commission for Seattle Century 21 in its economic planning and site location. Seattle’s fair became the first financially successful world’s fair.
In mid-1959 Bill Royce replaced Ed Robison in the leadership of an important Ford Foundation project to help build up the business acumen of the middle class in post-independence India. There he managed the SRI-formed National Council for Applied Economic Research, which was the first agency to gather demographics in India and still exists today.
From there, Royce joined the Long Range Planning Service (LRPS), serving as its Director from 1965 to 1968. In 1971, he became the director of the Tokyo Office and in charge of SRI East Asia from South Korea to Hong Kong. He held that position until 1976. While there, he became a founding director of the Japan Society for Corporate Planning.
After that assignment, Bill Royce returned to project work in the Business Intelligence Program, where, with Arnold Mitchell, he helped promote, with reports and seminars in the United State and Europe, the earlier-developed SRI concept of business “stakeholders.” Following his retirement in 1984, Bill Royce helped in the formation and operation of the SRI Alumni Association.
Bill Royce’s legacies as an industrial economist and pragmatist can still be seen in the continued success of the Business Intelligence Program and the Tokyo Office at SRI and in his long-lasting influence on economic stability around the world.
Mike joined SRI’s Radio Physics Laboratory in 1974 upon completion if his studies at Stanford. His early assignments included several radio communications and signal-intelligence projects. During this time, SRI’s Telecommunications Science Center (TSC) was leading a multi-contractor activity developing the early DARPA packet-radio, a wireless version of the early ARPANET. TSC engineers established a Bay Area testbed where radio performance was tested in a mobile environment.
As the packet radio development was nearing completion, DARPA began thinking about transitioning the packet-radio technology into the military services. Mike put forth the notion of a military testbed to expedite the transition. The idea was to work directly with military users allowing them hands-on experience with the new radios.
When the first military testbed contract was received in 1981, a new department was started within the Radio Physics Laboratory with Mike as the leader. The department of 14 grew rapidly and became a center in 1982. The staff size continued to grow and in 1988 the center became a division with a staff over 100. Today, the division is known as the Information, Telecommunications and Automation Division. Most of the research is performed in Menlo Park, but ITAD also maintains remote offices in Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, and Washington, DC in direct support of clients.
Mike became a member of the US Army Science Board in 1994 and served on the Board until 1998. He served as Vice-Chairman of the Board from 1995-1996 and was the Board Chairman from 1996-1998. In 1998, Mike became a member of the Defense Science Board where he still serves today.
Mike recently took a two-year assignment in the Pentagon where he is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR)
In his 28 yeas at SRI, Mike has been an outstanding leader: He built a new division, has led the establishment of new long term projects, and has added greatly to SRI’s reputation with the Department of Defense.
Paul Jorgensen came to SRI from GE in Schenectady where he was a coinventor of the high-pressure sodium lamps that now light our streets and highways. Paul joined SRI in August 1968 as Chairman of the Ceramics Department and established himself as an outstanding technical leader. He held management positions in the Materials Lab, the Physical Sciences Division, and the Life Sciences Division, and then became the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of SRI. In 1994 Paul became Executive Vice President for Major Programs, and retired from full time employment in December 2000. He continued to provide leadership for SRI Japan and SRI Korea for many years afterwards.
Paul guided the Japan Office for many years. He got the first SRI project funded by the Japanese government, and this relationship continues today. When President Reagan and the Premier of Japan agreed to more technical cooperation, Paul guided the effort that won SRI two of the six US projects that NTT funded. He led a multiyear project for Osaka Gas that involved more than 100 projects spread over many SRI units. He initiated projects with Isuzu that continued for 18 years.
Paul passed away on January 22, 2013. He has left a vast legacy. He championed the funding, design, and construction of SRI's P Building. He conceived and championed the SRI Fellows Award Program. He was the prime mover in changing SRI policy to establish royalty sharing with inventors. When SRI management was reluctant to pursue a patent infringement by ATL, Paul persuaded the Board of Directors to defend SRI’s intellectual property rights. The resulting lawsuit ended in SRI’s favor with an award of $37.5 million.
Paul’s contributions have made SRI a stronger and more effective organization. He was demanding of his staff while providing them with excellent leadership, and always had their respect. In the 34 years Paul was at SRI, he built a long-term legacy for SRI in Japan and Korea, and championed management initiatives that continue to be important to SRI’s enduring success.
Donn Parker came to SRI in 1969 as director of computer operations after 17 years at Control Data Corporation, following graduate education in mathematics at UC Berkeley. Opportunities to discover new things at SRI led him into research and consulting on computer crime and information security where he developed the premier information security consulting program that made an international reputation for himself and SRI. The program was spun off when he retired in 1997.
Donn has led and been a team member of more than 250 information security consulting projects at SRI. These projects have enabled businesses and governments to use computers and communications more safely. The National Science Foundation and Department of Justice funded much of his research on computer abuse, misuse, and ethics. Donn has interviewed more than 200 computer criminals and their victims, and produced definitive reports and six books on computer crime and security; they have been translated into several languages. For many years he was making more than 60 presentations each year for SRI throughout the world and has been interviewed or quoted widely, firmly establishing SRI as a leader in information security.
Donn’s most significant single contribution was the establishment of the International Information Integrity Institute (I-4). He started I-4 as a multiclient membership program in 1985; it grew to 75 members and continued today as the preeminent information security membership organization world wide. Member organizations have included IBM, GE, HP, DuPont, 3M, Merck, EDS, Bank of America, Citigroup, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Rabobank, Siemens, Motorola, Fujitsu, NEC, NIT, Schwab, Deloitte & Touche, St. Paul Companies, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and government participants including the US, British, Singapore, Dutch, and Japanese. SRI sold I-4 as part of SRIC, but it continues at RedSiren Technologies to have a relationship with SRI and still brings credit to SRI.
Through his leadership and extensive work in computer security, Donn Parker has made significant contributions to the enduring success of SRI.
Each member of the SRI Alumni Hall of Fame has made a lasting contribution to SRI. George Abrahamson has never stopped contributing to SRI—and probably never will. George started at SRI in 1953 as a machinist for Dr. Thomas Poulter. His Ph.D. thesis research was conducted during 1957 in the backyard of Poulter Lab’s original home, the tarpaper shacks along the back fence. The key ingredients were a clothesline, a water hose, and a pan of silly putty. George’s thesis and early papers were the first to describe the phenomenon of explosive (or impact) welding. In the late 1950s, virtually single-handedly, George developed a program for the Air Force to simulate the effects of nuclear weapons on re-entry vehicles. He led a team that made SRI a key developer and tester of vulnerability and lethality criteria for our missile and ABM systems exposed to nuclear attack.
As director of Poulter Lab, George led development of many innovative uses of high explosives and propellants. Many of his ideas in scale modeling of dynamic phenomena are in constant use today in Poulter Laboratory and throughout the world. George held Poulter Lab together during the lean years of decreased defense funding, and he spurred the staff to move into more work for commercial and international clients. Poulter Lab has now survived for almost 50 years.
In 1980, George became Vice President of the Physical Sciences Division and, in 1988, Senior Vice President of the Sciences Group. He retired in 1991 to be Chief Scientist of the Air Force, then returned to SRI in 1994 as a Senior Technical Advisor. In 1999, he provided temporary leadership of the Physical Sciences Division during a difficult transition period. George is now a world expert in designing performance review and compensation methods, based on the ideas he developed at SRI. These methods are being implemented in the U. S. military and by at least one foreign corporation. George helped form and currently leads the SRI Alumni Association.
George was best known for his success in gaining—and keeping—the trust and respect of clients. His motto was, “Always give your clients more than they paid for. But at the beginning, promise them as little as possible.” George Abrahamson is a model of the ideal SRI citizen; he has helped us all to have a lot of excitement and fun and continues to do so.
Dale joined SRI in 1953 and retired after 31 years of a distinguished career. His innovative research and development in analytical chemistry resulted in the establishment of the Chemistry Laboratory’s Analytical Chemistry Department, which produced pioneering research on identifying and measuring pesticide residues in the environment. The group has been in continual operation now for 46 years.
Dr. Coulson developed several innovative methods of producing standard reference samples, which the EPA used to set standards for detecting pollutants and toxic chemicals in water. He devised equipment for dynamic generation of test atmospheres containing mixtures of toxic substances ranging from dusts and fumes to solid and liquid aerosols and asbestos. He holds patents on apparatus for electrochemical detection and coulometric titration, a system for detecting and analyzing trace gases, an electrochemical detector cell, and a pyrolysis furnace. He is the author of fifty publications.
In 1974, the Association of Official Analytical Chemists presented Dale with the Harvey H. Wiley Award in recognition of his pioneering effort in applying gas chromatography to the analysis of pesticide residues, which revolutionized trace analysis by permitting the rapid simultaneous detection and determination of most of the common pesticides in a single operation at the previously unattainable level of parts per billion. The award also recognized his inventiveness in devising element selective detectors, which added specificity to the inherent properties of selectivity and sensitivity of the multi-residue method for pesticides.
Dale assisted government agencies in applying this new technique to regulatory problems, and he guided and inspired others in analytical methodology through teaching and publications. Although the Analytical Chemistry Department’s programs have varied in emphasis and content, the Department's Proficiency Analytical Testing program, begun by Dale, has continued to the present. The project produces standard samples for laboratories to test their analysis proficiency at a revenue rate of more than $1 million per year. Dale’s dedication and scientific skills have contributed significantly to the enduring success of SRI.
Phil Green was one of SRI's best managers, inventors, and promoters—a combination of skills that creates success at SRI. After his graduation, Phil Green was doing research at Lockheed on acoustic imaging for underwater detection, using very low frequency and long wavelength ultrasound energy. He believed that, if the frequency of the ultrasound was greatly increased, the resulting shorter wavelength would allow imaging of much smaller structures, for example, in the human body.
When Phil Green moved to SRI in 1968, he joined the very small bioengineering activity scattered about the Engineering Group. Hew Crane was working on visual instruments; Jim Bliss was working on bio-information systems; George Eilers was interested in ocular tonometry. When Phil Green began seeking grant support for his fledgling ultrasonic imaging activity, he also visited many commercial companies and formed alliances with local medical groups. This early exploration paid off later in commercial contracts with many biomedical companies and a firm base of clinical expertise with major medical centers, such as the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. One of his early successful grants was a three-year study of ultrasonic effects on human tissues, an investigation done jointly by the Engineering Group and Life Sciences. As Phil's reputation in the field grew, commercial clients began funding instrumentation development at SRI.
Phil was particularly good at attracting and hiring new staff, especially young, enthusiastic engineers and physicists. He ran a very hard-working but light-hearted group of researchers. In the early 1980s, his team was responsible for late-night secret installation of the SRI Gargoyle atop the new, sleekly modern P-Building stacks.
Phil was a prolific inventor, amassing numerous valuable patents on ultrasonic engineering and other applications of bioengineering. He developed the minimally invasive tele-presence surgery concept and minimally invasive instrumentation and techniques, which allow doctors the same dexterity and precision as open surgery, but through small incisions. These patents formed the basis of SRI's startup company, Intuitive Surgical, Inc., which went public in June 2000 and is expected to be a resounding success for SRI. Phil Green’s lasting contributions to SRI include innovative technology, millions in patent royalties, and a promising new spin-off company.
For 35 years, Kitta Reeds edited or wrote about 300 proposals a year—that’s over 10,000 proposals—ranging from $25,000 to $25 million. Kitta Reeds joined SRI in 1964 and became a technical writer/editor in 1970. She edited for all parts of SRI, but primarily for the physical and life sciences groups. As Manager of Publications for the Sciences Group, Kitta streamlined the proposal process to relieve the researchers of all the details of proposal preparation except writing of the technical sections. She summarized the requirements of each Request for Proposal to help the people who prepared the cost and contractual parts of the proposal and who were responsible for approval and mailing. Kitta was the first to put all the contractual provisions for proposals on-line so that the Business Office could prepare that part of proposals easily.
Kitta constantly reminded SRI's proposal writers to "write about what your client wants to buy—not just what you want to sell.” She prepared detailed outlines for each major proposal to make sure that it complied precisely with the Request for Proposal, met all the client’s evaluation criteria, and made it easy for the proposal evaluators to appreciate our concept and award a contract.
Kitta went far beyond her job as an editor. She designed and led workshops to train staff in proposal writing. She was a coach, cheerleader, and confidante to many a project leader. Her loyalty to SRI staff and to the organization as a whole was unwavering. She was unafraid to speak her mind (and she did so effectively) when she thought people were not acting in the best interests of the organization. As chair of the Institute Staff Advisory Group in 1984-1985, she led SRI staff in discussing issues with SRI’s top managers.
Kitta never did a forty-hour week; she stayed late, came in on weekends, and generally exhibited a spirit of teamwork that was exemplary. Kitta routinely performed wonders for the sometimes inexperienced, almost always tardy, proposal authors, turning their initial efforts into clear, organized, winning proposals. Remarkably, she accomplished these transformations without changing the meaning of the technical information the writer wanted to convey while working under exacting deadline pressure. Kitta Reeds left to SRI the legacy of high writing standards and writers capable of meeting those standards.
Carl Titus came to SRI in 1949 as employee number 89; he was one of Jesse Hobson’s colleagues from Armour Research Foundation. In 1951 he was put in charge of the Associates Program, which was set up to obtain equity capital for SRI from companies that would become Associates of SRI and be given special access to SRI research findings. Titus’s involvement followed a speech by David Sarnoff at the Fairmont Hotel on November 14, 1951, in which Sarnoff enthusiastically presented the need for industry to support organizations like SRI to enable industry to stay in touch with research: “{SRI} is important not just because it has fine laboratories and able researchers, which it certainly has, but because it is an outstanding example of the natural partnership between research and industry.”
At the end of 1952, the cumulative total from the Associates Program was $783,000, with an additional $375,000 in pledges. The program was already a success and it was clear that the $1.5 million goal would be achieved. The importance of the first $783,000 of Associates’ support cannot be over-emphasized. It literally made the difference between a financially strapped organization and one with some financial security. Fred Kamphoefner recalls seeing a financial report at one point that showed the net worth of the Institute to be about the same as the total dollars that had been raised by the Associates Program. The program also led to important research relationships: by the end of 1955, at least 73 of the first 100 Associates had become clients of SRI. Fred recalls that “in my laboratory in the sixties, 85% of our contracts were for SRI Associates.”
Many played a role in getting new companies into the Associates Program, but it was Carl Titus who saw to it that all went along in an orderly way. He was well liked by our Associates and did an excellent job in a quiet way. He left SRI in 1971. As Hoot Gibson said in his book, “More credit is due him than has ever been recognized in a lasting way. He was our equity capital man.”
Hew Crane was one of SRI’s visionaries, combining several disciplines into his multilevel career, characterized by his superb creativity, his organizational skills, and his ability to mold young talent into strong working teams. Hew’s PhD thesis—still quoted today—was on his concept of the Neuristor, a hypothetical device modeled after the human nerve cell—the neuron. Hew showed that all the functions of a modern digital computer could be implemented using only a combination of neuristors.
Hew Crane always liked to work on anything that could help people. In the opinion of many, he was SRI’s first bioengineer. In the 1960s, SRI’s biotechnology capabilities expanded. With Don Kelly and Tom Cornsweet, Hew organized a Visual Sciences Program. He recruited young PhDs and recent MDs to begin developing novel instruments for measuring the fundamentals of human vision. The most successful of these instruments was the SRI Purkinje Image Eye-Tracker, which could measure the pointing direction of the eye with about ten times the accuracy of any current instruments. When other organizations wanted their own units, Hew built four more units, which he thought would provide all the instruments needed by vision researchers. The eye-tracker was then combined with another new instrument—the SRI optometer in a binocular arrangement that allowed a vision researcher to track, in real time, the exact point in three-dimensional space where the eyes were focused. SRI designed, constructed, and delivered 30 instruments—each a project averaging over $100,000— before an outside company was licensed to take over the manufacturing.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hew developed a new approach to recognizing handwritten characters that would allow automatic input of handwritten information to a computer. Hew’s system found a strong market in Japan, where the usual keyboard was not useful for a language that uses about 2000 Chinese characters plus about 100 phonetic characters. For the first time, SRI established a spin-off, Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC). Hew joined CIC half time as their technical vice president. Later, SRI’s stock in CIC was sold at a substantial profit.
Hew Crane, one of SRI’s most prolific inventors, has left behind a challenge to all to emulate his combination of multidisciplinary inventiveness, organizational skills, and leadership that can take SRI on to even more advanced achievements.
As Director of Public Relations at SRI from December 1948 to November 1956, Bill Estler’s vision was to make SRI the best known and respected applied research organization in the world. When he joined SRI as employee number 71, SRI was quartered in the rustic remains of a WW II Army hospital. Clients were not clamoring for SRI’s services; outstanding scientists, engineers, and administrators were not flocking to its doors. If SRI was known at all, it was as some vague kind of adjunct of Stanford University.
With only limited budgets, Bill developed a sensitive but broad outreach program. He worked in harmony with the technical and administrative staff and with the Institute’s board, earning their respect while encouraging them to believe in the future he envisioned. Working with the Director, Jesse Hobson, and with Hoot Gibson, Tom Morin, and Tom Poulter, he coordinated the very successful SRI Associates program and brought in many noted visitors such as solar pioneer Maria Telkes and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Bill applied a cachet of style to every aspect of the Instituteís image and functions from graphics to publications and the organization of symposia, special events, and visitor tours. His publicity accomplishments are legendary. He established mutually respectful relationships with editors and noted writers from the world over, resulting in major articles identifying SRI’s outstanding work and people. SRI, its work, and its people quickly began appearing regularly in major dailies like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Denver Post, Portland Oregonian, and Seattle Intelligencer as well as almost every relevant technical journal and magazines such as Business Week, Fortune, and Barons.
Bill Estler started Research for Industry, a monthly publication showcasing SRI’s work in nontechnical terms to thousands of business executives around the world. Research for Industry drew appreciation of SRI’s problem-solving capabilities and resulted in countless inquiries and many funded projects. Because of Bill’s efforts, SRI began attracting more and more research assignments and exceptionally gifted technical staffers. Bill Estler’s multitalented and devoted efforts created the strong foundation that helped SRI grow.
Elizabeth Feinler, known as Jake, was a crucial part of the technological revolution now known as the Internet, and manager of one of SRI’s most financially rewarding centers for more than 20 years.
Jake was leading the Literature Research section of SRI’s library in 1967 when the Advanced Research Projects Agency was planning the ARPANET. By 1969, Doug Engelbart recruited Jake to join his Augmentation Research Center to help plan and organize the Network Information Center (NIC) for the planned ARPANET.
As the ARPANET came online in 1969, the NIC was responsible for giving instructions on how to interface a host to the network, issuing ARPANET numeric and symbolic addresses, maintaining the library, and distributing RFCs (Request for Comments)—the initial standards for the evolving ARPANET. Jake and people like Jon Postel worked very hard in the early days to establish the RFCs as the official set of technical notes. This was not an easy job, because there were many parallel efforts and splinter groups. For example, after endless meetings about whether the domain name system should have a logical or a geographic basis, Jake shouted that enough was enough and she was making the choice. Because she did, we now have .com, .gov, .org.
By 1972, when Jake became Principal Investigator for the NIC project, the ARPANET was growing rapidly. The SRI NLS Journal became the bibliographic search service of the ARPANET. It provided the first links to on-line documents. By 1976, when email and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) had been implemented, the NIC developed methods for delivering information to users via distributed information servers across the network.
The NIC was at SRI for about 22 years, from 1969 until 1991. That was an enormous run and most of that time, the renewal of the project was almost totally Jake’s doing. She did a great job of pleasing first ARPA and then the Defense Communications Agency (DCA). When Jake left SRI and the NIC project in 1989, there were about 30,000 hosts on what was becoming known as the Internet. Today there are millions. Jake Feinler made a difference—to the fortunes of SRI and to the future of the Internet.
Doug Keough gained the respect of the researchers and technicians he worked with because of his skill in handling both the theoretical and practical aspects of problems and his willingness to help co-workers. Doug Keough was hired as a physicist in 1956 by Doc Poulter and started with a project aimed at measuring micro-meteorite momentum at impact using piezoelectric transducers. With a strong interest in electronics as well as physics, Doug was soon providing instrumentation guidance at Poulter Labs.
In 1961 Doug started a project under the leadership of Dave Bernstein to develop a transducer capable of measuring the extreme pressures of explosively generated shock waves traveling in solids (pressures of millions of pounds per square inch, lasting only a few micro-seconds). At that time, such dynamic pressures could not be measured and were calculated based on optical measurements of the interactions of shock waves with free surfaces. Although the scientific community was highly skeptical that accurate electrical measurements could be made under such extreme conditions, Doug persisted and over the next five years, he developed the necessary systems and techniques. By the late-1960s, his piezoresistive transducers had gained an initial scientific acceptance. Today, the manganin and ytterbium transducers he developed, which span a useful range of pressure measurement from 10,000 to over 10,000,000 psi, have become the standard by which other systems are judged.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Doug’s expertise in piezoresistive pressure transducers, complemented by the strong theoretical base at Poulter Labs, was pivotal in obtaining numerous projects related to Cold War research. Doug’s transducers were used in studies as diverse as laser-induced impulses on missiles, high velocity projectile impacts, and explosively generated shock waves in solids, liquids, and gases. SRI’s research made major contributions to the accurate characterization of large-scale underground detonations—work that became critical in verifying compliance with nuclear test ban treaties.
During the 1970s, Doug Keough’s expertise in shock wave propagation and dynamic pressure measurement became widely recognized, and his service on steering committees guiding national policy helped maintain SRI’s leadership role in these areas.
Ken Lunde was the founder and first director of the Process Economics Program, affectionately known as PEP. Since 1965, this multiclient program has provided technical and economic data to the chemical, petroleum, polymer, and energy industries worldwide as well as to government agencies and planners of many kinds.
Ken was one of the first chemical engineers to join SRI. Starting in 1948, he worked in the Chemical Engineering Laboratory under Nevin Hiester and became the Manager of the Industrial Air Pollution Section. After a 4-year hiatus at Kaiser Engineers, Ken returned to SRI in 1963 to develop new Chemical Engineering Economics services for the Economics Division, which already offered the successful Chemical Economics Handbook. He recognized that the patent literature represented an untapped repository of technical information on which the design of chemical production plants could be based. Design and economic evaluation of chemical processes could thus be done independently of proprietary company information.
Until he retired in 1983, Ken Lunde wrote PEP reports, led and worked on single-client projects, traveled to market PEP, and recruited and administered the PEP staff. One of the keys to PEP’s success was Ken’s insistence that the PEP studies be conducted by experienced chemical engineers, preferably those with 15 or more years of design and operating experience in the chemical industry. He also devised the format for the reports, which has been followed uniformly ever since—along with the dark-green 7-ring binders, custom-made for each report.
Since 1976, the economics tables from the reports of the Process Economics Program have been assembled into a Yearbook, providing comparable cost data for the production of several hundred chemicals and polymers. The PEP Yearbook International gets thicker as the years go by. The PEP program has spawned other multiclient services, such as the Environmental Processes Handbook.
PEP has attracted (and outlasted) imitators. After 35 years, it still serves 70 to 80 clients each year. The program Ken Lunde started has spread SRI’s fame around the world.
Don Nielson represents that rare evolution of a highly successful technical person into a most human and respected manager of people. The labs and centers that Don managed are still very active and productive today. SRI’s preeminence in computer R & D and especially in modern computer science was greatly enhanced by Don’s many contributions, both technical and managerial.
Don came to SRI in 1959 as a Research Engineer under Ray Vincent, taking on assignments in telecommunications technology while working on his PhD at Stanford, which he received in 1969. He was named Assistant Director of the Telecom Department in 1973 and in 1978 became Director of the Telecommunications Science Center. In 1984, Don was named Vice President for the newly formed Computer Science and Technology Division.
One of the most important of SRI’s projects in high-speed networking was the Packet Radio project, sponsored by ARPA to provide reliable data communications. The big advantage of a radio-based packet-switched network was the speed of deployment and the resulting fault tolerance that could be achieved. Don—along with Ron Kunzelman and Stan Fralick—led this important program. They built the first ARPA packet-switched demonstration radio network in the San Francisco Bay Area, including one station mounted in a van, which could be demonstrated to visiting sponsors on the way to lunch.
Don supported the development of the first hand-held computer terminal with David Fylstra as project leader. This device could be used as a very small and lightweight portable telecom terminal. It was also developed into a phone terminal for the deaf.
When Don began his career at SRI, the heart of telecommunications technology was focused on analog hardware, mainly antennas, radio design, and telecom components. Don steered our telecom work to the more modern and sophisticated digitally based computer networks, where software development was the key. SRI’s preeminence in telecom technology throughout this transition was due largely to Don Nielson’s contributions—his technical knowledge, his management capabilities, and his foresight.
Richard Foster joined SRI in the early 1950s and in his 30-year career provided leadership and expertise that created high prestige and international visibility for SRI. Foster brought together experts in economics and technology to better understand and develop national strategy. This team developed into SRI's Strategic Studies Center (SSC), which worked closely with the Engineering Research Group. SSC’s multidisciplinary strengths gave it an advantage with high-level Washington clients.
Foster’s first assignment was to provide support to the US Army's Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University. SRI's contribution grew and the Army decided to support SRI directly. Foster’s work led him into increasingly important programs that brought him into frequent contact with senior level Army staff. He received the Army's Certificate of Appreciation for his “...pioneering effort on the critical problems of the US air defense, strategic deterrence, and national survival.”
Foster's work in air defense led to new assignments in the defense against ballistic missile attack. His group received contracts to study overseas deployment of air and missile defense systems, which entailed extensive investigations of Soviet capabilities. This work was considered so important that its oversight was transferred directly to the Army's Office of the Chief of Staff. The success of this program brought new clients, including the Department of State, CIA, and the Atomic Energy Commission. SSC’s multidisciplinary knowledge also led it into increasingly controversial work, including the proposed Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense program (Star Wars). Foster was invited to develop and manage a seminar at SRI (the Teller Symposium) where experts could debate the issues of the Star Wars program.
Richard Foster continued to lead SSC into important areas of research that focused on the ability of our government to function during war. With the breakup of AT&T, Foster's people recommended establishing the National Strategic Telecommunication Advisory Committee, which is still an important part of the National Infrastructure Protection program.
Under Richard Foster, the SSC gave SRI a reputation for being an important contributor to the development of national policy and strategy that continues to be widely recognized today.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1948, Dr. Granger joined SRI in May 1949. His first assignment was to recruit staff, then organize and manage a new engineering labóthe Antenna Lab. He collected a group of excellent researchers, many from Harvard, some from Berkeley, Stanford, and USC. Some of his top recruits were Dr. Jack Bolljahn, Dr. Seymour Cohn, Dr. George Matthei, Dr. Tetsu Morita, and Dr. Edward M. T. Jones.
Granger established strong relationships with the defense research funding sources, including the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Rome Air Development Center, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As the Antenna Lab grew in size and reputation, Granger continued his promotional activities, developing contacts with commercial organizations such as Douglas Aircraft, North American, and Lockheed.
Granger's laboratory was very successful in developing new ECM antennas, new log-periodic antennas, and a high-frequency (HF) sounder, which could be used to explore the ionosphere for telecommunications transmission. The large demand for these devices led Dr. Granger to spin off from SRI and establish Granger Associates in Palo Alto in the early 1960s.
In the late 1950s, Dr. Robert Tanner invented a simple device for discharging the static electricity that builds up on flying aircraft. Granger and his staff, including Tanner and others, developed a procedure to design the optimum array of static dischargers for any particular aircraft configuration, thereby minimizing the effects of radio interference. Tannerís patents were licensed to Granger Associates for manufacture and marketing. Eventually all high-speed aircraft, including the "new" Boeing 707 used these devices.
At SRI, John deserves much credit for attracting outstanding staff and providing technical leadership during the period of rapid expansion of SRI's engineering operations. John was a very outgoing, friendly, and technically capable leader. He was especially encouraging to young engineers who joined the growing group. The laboratory that John Granger built became the core of the Electronics and Radio Sciences Division, which eventually peaked at about 500 members.
Melba Harrison joined SRI’s expanding staff as a switchboard operator in 1961. Her career progressed rapidly through a series of positions, culminating in the title of Senior Supervising Receptionist, with a staff of six reporting to her.
As the lead receptionist at the main entrance, Melba was often a client’s first impression of SRI. Many organization theorists have written about the importance of such front-line communicators as Melba Harrison, describing them as the most important link to company business in the organization. In Melba’s case, this proved to be true. In fact, the title receptionist was a misnomer, for Melba created and redefined this role.
To be responsive to her clients’ needs, Melba became familiar with the complexities of SRI’s research in many diverse fields. Her knowledge of SRI’s research combined with her extraordinary memory for names and faces made clients feel welcomed. She was appreciated by clients and visitors from all parts of the world. Her response to the thousands of varied personalities that approached her desk was unfailing helpfulness, knowledge, and cheer.
Melba considered changing careers only once. In the early sixties, she told a vice president she was considering getting into the field of computers because it seemed to be a growing area. The vice president told her, No, computers were just a passing fad.
From her beginning days in 1961 to her retirement in 1995, Melba Harrison touched the world with integrity, wisdom, and kindness. Melba represented SRI under six SRI Presidents, beginning with E. Finley Carter. Three of these presidents attended her farewell party, and others sent messages. Dr. William P. Sommers described her performance this way:
Melba was much more than a receptionist. Clients and visitors spoke of her as an extraordinary person who went out of her way to make people feel welcome. Melba Harrison’s legacy is a wealth of goodwill toward SRI.
Dr. Richard C. Honey made numerous fundamental technical contributions in his career at SRI, which began in 1952. He is an internationally known scientist of great integrity and creativity. His achievements have contributed greatly to SRI's reputation, mainly in antenna design and laser applications. Working with Dr. Ted Jones, Dick developed and patented the first wide-band omnidirectional antenna for direction finding applications. This Honey-Jones antenna is still used today in signal-intelligence applications. Later, the Honey array became the first leaky-wave antenna for practical applications.
In the early 1960s, Dick's interests turned to the new laser technology and how lasers could be applied to solve problems important to society. The first useful development was LIDAR, that is, light radar. Dick's work built a strong reputation for SRI in exploration of the upper atmospheric and in oceanic applications of laser technology. He has always been known for strong theoretical skills, but was noted particularly for his hands-on approach. When it came time for someone to do the deep dive to verify some undersea experiment, Dick was always the first to volunteer. Many of his contributions cannot be discussed in detail, even today, owing to national security implications.
In the late 1960s, Dr. Honey began to apply his knowledge to biomedical applications of the new laser. With a group of ophthalmologists from Stanford University and the Palo Alto Clinic, Dick and his people examined the use of the laser in retinal surgery. Using monkeys as test subjects, Dick and his lab developed the first standards for laser retinal exposure. He served on the first American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee for establishing eye protection standards. When Dick's boss, SRI VP Don Scheuch, suffered a detached retina in a tennis accident, Don Scheuch became one of the first to benefit from this procedure.
For the past 40 years, Dick Honey has been considered one of the finest professionals at SRI. He is a very kind and gentle contributor, and we all enjoyed working with him and learning from him.
Ralph Krause was influential in establishing the character of Stanford Research Institute even before it was formally created. During WWII, he was a young Navy officer serving as Scientific Adviser to the Secretary of the Navy. He helped create a Naval Office of Research and Invention, later to be called the Office of Naval Research (ONR). After the war, while Krause was Commander of the San Francisco branch office of ONR, Drs. Terman and Tressider invited him to Stanford to consult on the possible character of a new organization they were planning, Stanford Research Institute. Krause informed them that ONR would “look favorably” on the creation of an applied research facility, thus tipping the decision in the direction favored by Terman.
At Jesse Hobson’s invitation, Krause joined SRI as Director of Research in June 1948, a position he held through three Director/Presidents. From this position, he would again have influence on the character and development of SRI. He was a part of Hobson’s five-person long range planning team and thus helped write the first Five-Year Plan for SRI. He brought in Tom Morrin from ONR to head the new Engineering Department. Together, Morrin and Krause brought in many of the staff from the Radio Research Lab at Harvard, one of the big laboratories built up for the war effort. Krause also brought in Raymond Ewell from Shell Development to head Chemistry and Chem Engineering, Larry Richards as head of Chemistry, and Jack Gordon as head of Chemical Engineering. He also hired Paul Cook, who initiated the Radiation Engineering Lab.
Krause not only brought key people to SRI, he also used his contacts from years in ONR to open doors to projects in many parts of SRI. For Engineering, he brought in projects on Single Sideband Generation from the US Army Signal Corps, on Electronics Miniaturization from ONR, and Antenna Studies from the Air Material Command. For Chemistry, he brought in a project on Aqueous Bubbles and Project “Rabbit” from ONR as well as a project on Chlorella from the Carnegie Institute. For Economics, he brought in Aircraft Engine Studies from the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. His travels opened up research possibilities in Europe, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India.
Ralph Krause left SRI a legacy of strong leaders and a broad client base.
The establishment and growth of SRI's Engineering organization were due primarily to the leadership of Thomas H. Morrin. Tom Morrin joined SRI in 1948 as the very first member of what would become the future Engineering Research Group. Based on his extensive Naval Engineering career during WWII and his early postwar association with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Tom Morrin was given the responsibility to build a new Engineering capability at SRI. Morrin attracted leaders, such as Dr. Jerre Noe, Dr. John Granger, Dr. Donald Scheuch, Mr. Lucien Clarke, and others that he had worked with during his ONR days of overseeing the work of the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory, which had contributed significantly to the development of radar during WWII.
Over the next 15 years, as Vice President for SRI’s Engineering Group, Tom Morrin provided the appropriate environment for bringing important and significant government defense and commercial projects to SRI. In 1955, with support from Dr. Fred Terman, Provost of Stanford University, Tom Morrin convinced Dr. Allen Peterson to add to his university professor role and in addition become a senior scientist at SRI. This new relationship created a bridge between Stanford and SRI, which in turn further caused the organization to expand its involvement in important areas.
Morrin also sought out commercial clients that he felt would benefit from innovative technological advances. Morrin worked with Southern Pacific, which established a Basic Ordering Agreement, from which several now-familiar projects emerged, such as the grade crossing computer and the hydrocushion shock absorber coupler technology for cross country transports that is still considered an industry standard.
Morrin had the ability to build a team to meet an objective, then get out of the way and allow it to work. Due in large extent to Morrin's efforts, Engineering grew from a staff of 1 when he arrived in 1948 to 150 when he left in 1963, laying the foundation for a growth to over 1000 later on. He also helped create its outstanding reputation for quality with many parts of the US government and with many important commercial companies worldwide.
Jerre Noe joined SRI as one of the original group that came to SRI from Fred Terman’s Radio Research Lab (RRL) at Harvardóthe group that formed the first Engineering activity here in 1948.
Jerre Noe, who served as Director of the Information Sciences and Engineering Division for many years, was the prime mover to establish SRI's position in the newly emerging fields of computers and information engineering. He set up new laboratories in computers under Byron Bennett, control systems under Fred Kamphoefner, and several other areas that were undergoing rapid development in the 1950s and 1960s.
When Hoot Gibson, SRI's Executive VP, introduced Bank of America President Clark Beise to Tom Morrin and SRI's engineers, it was Jerre Noe who responded with the proposals to B of A to develop a highly automated banking system, including new high-speed check-handling hardware and associated computational systems. The ensuing project, called ERMA for Electronic Recording Machine Accounting, became the largest commercial project at SRI in the 1950s and continued for seven or eight years. The Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) system developed in this project is used today to process billions of bank checks all over the world.
Jerre Noe continued to build his Division capabilities, supporting strong projects in new television technology, electron devices, graphic sciences, and a new lab under Charlie Rosen called Learning Machines, which evolved into the Artificial Intelligence Center and is continuing strongly today.
Jerre reflected the strong background and values of the Harvard group, just as Fred Terman and John Granger had done. He was always a strong technical leader and a friend to all his staff. He was particularly encouraging to the young engineers who joined his Division.
He was an avid sailor and skier and an accomplished musician, playing the flute in some local groups. In 1970 he left SRI to join the University of Washington as the Chairman of the Computer Sciences Department. He now lives in Seattle.
Dr. Allen Peterson—"Dr. Pete" to his many associates and "Pete" to his close friends—divided his time between his responsibilities at Stanford University and at SRI (presumably 50/50 but probably more like 100/100). Beginning in 1958, Dr. Pete became a bridge between Stanford and SRI in his fields of interest: high tech computers, digital signal processing, VLSI design, communications systems, radar systems, and remote sensing systems.
Dr. Pete's early responsibility at SRI was as Manager of the Communications and Propagation Laboratory. When the Laboratory grew to about 150 people, Dr. Pete turned over management of the Laboratory to Ray Leadabrand and Ray Vincent so that he could work hands-on with the engineers and scientists on urgent technical problems of the day. He was well respected in the military science and technology community, particularly in radio physics and communications. He contributed to the planning and implementation of the International Geophysical Year.
Dr. Pete had a long involvement with the physics of atmospheric nuclear explosions and their effects on the ionosphere and on radio-wave propagation. He organized SRI's participation in the atmospheric nuclear tests in the summer of 1958 (TEAK, ORANGE, and ARGUS) in cooperation with the then Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory. Later, Dr. Pete attended the atmospheric nuclear test-ban-treaty negotiations in Geneva shortly after the ARGUS test as technical advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the Geneva Conference on Discontinuation of Nuclear Tests. In the early 1960s, he worked on the FISHBOWL atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific.
Dr. Pete was a persuasive negotiator both within Stanford and within the Government. After helping get approval to build the 150-ft parabolic-dish antenna in the Stanford antenna field, he helped use the SRI dish and a university transmitter for the then new field of radar (and some radio) astronomy. Dr. Pete used a similar antenna in Scotland in one of the first U.S. satellite-communications experiments.
Throughout the Cold War, SRI was squarely on the map because of Dr. Pete's efforts. His outstanding engineering and scientific knowledge had a huge influence on SRI programs and on the technical development of all who worked with him.
Lorraine Pratt joined SRI as an Assistant Librarian in July 1948 and was appointed Librarian in 1950. During her tenure, she met the challenge of providing support to a research institute staff whose disciplines ranged in diversity from economics and engineering to the life and physical sciences. Lorraine was not only instrumental in building a collection of books and journals to support the staff, she also provided services such as literature searching, purchase of publications, and borrowing of books and journals that were not in the library collection. There were few projects at SRI that did not include support from the library.
In 1953, she established branch libraries in Economics, Engineering, and Life Sciences to provide better local and professional support. In 1954 she established an Atomic Energy Commission depository at SRI. A Documents Center was established that included classified and unclassified documents. After this was disbanded, Lorraine assumed control of the Records Center, which included SRI reports and an archives program.
Lorraine's early recognition (1973) of the value of online database systems as a research tool resulted in a savings of both time and money to SRI researchers and consultants. She also recognized automation as a means of streamlining operations within the library. In 1980 she initiated a private file of 55,000 records of SRI reports on DIALOG.
Lorraine recognized the unique character of the library and aligned herself with librarians from Battelle, A.D. Little, SDC, and Rand Corporation. They met annually, sometimes at SRI, to discuss similar challenges within their libraries. She was recognized within the library community and was active nationally and internationally.
Don Scheuch was one of the first recruits from the Radio Research Lab (RRL) at Harvard. When Tom Morrin joined SRI in 1948 as the Director of the first SRI Engineering effort, he encouraged several of the more talented and experienced staff at RRL to come west to the newly established SRI in California. They came to Stanford and to SRI to build a regional center of electronics capability (later to be known as Silicon Valley). Like several others at RRL, Don Scheuch saw this as an opportunity to take on a new responsibility at SRI and, at the same time, to continue his work toward a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford.
Scheuch joined SRI in May of 1949 and organized SRI's first Systems Analysis activity, attracting many young engineers to the area. Later, he was asked to serve as Vice President for the Electronics and Radio Sciences Division, which made up about 60% of the Engineering Research Group. The laboratories under his direction gained national recognition for providing pioneering work in support of the national air defense and ballistic missile defense efforts.
In the 1960s, Dr. Scheuch became the Engineering Group Director and later Senior Vice President for all of Engineering. The Group grew to more than 1000 staff. Under President Charlie Anderson's Office of Research Operations (ORO), Dr. Scheuch was appointed as chief of all of SRI's research activities. Don was a friendly and outgoing manager. He was particularly supportive and encouraging to the more junior people who were being recruited at that time of rapid growth.
Following his retirement from SRI in the early 1980s, he joined a local venture capital firm to offer his technical expertise to their investment skills. He still makes his home in nearby Portola Valley.
Ron Swidler was the first chemist to be hired at SRI's new Southern California Labs in 1956 and he helped build the South Pasadena labs. He developed long-term client relationships that kept him busy for many years. After Ron transferred to Menlo Park in 1970, he managed the Organic Special Programs Department. After several years, he decided that management didn't suit his skills and that he wanted to stick to chemical research. As an independent researcher, he could promote and direct his own projects and lend support to other ongoing projects that needed his creative skills.
One outstanding success was Ron's invention and development of Ankaphast, a new class of dyes developed under a contract with Burlington Industries. The dyes were stable to light and laundering and were much easier to manufacture than other dye systems. For other clients, he developed and patented processes for making permanent press fabrics, fire retardant coatings for fabrics, and new inks and toners for color printers.
In 1975, Dr. Swidler joined the project sponsored by Savin Business Machines, which was the largest commercial project at SRI at that time. SRI was developing a completely new line of office copiers for Savin, using a newly conceived liquid-toner approach. The project was set up in the Engineering Group, where experts in electronics, electrostatics, optical imaging, and mechanical design were available. Ron Swidler brought to the project a complete understanding of the chemical requirements for such an undertaking—the chemistry of the photoconductive drum, the toner development materials, and the entire exposure process. The Chairman of Savin, Mr. Paul Charlap, told us that the results of our work produced more than $100 million in new copier sales.
In his 32 years at SRI, Ron worked with all three SRI business groups and with researchers in many disciplines. His thirty patents and numerous patents pending do not fully reflect the range of his creativity in fields such as fatty acid chemistry, dye and pigment chemistry, cellulose chemistry, textiles processing, boron chemistry, and electro-photography. Ron Swidler's legacy is an outstanding example of how we can work across divisions in interdisciplinary teams to succeed on complex projects.
Mike Villard was one of several SRI staff members hired by Fred Terman to work at the Harvard Radio Research Lab in the early 1940s. At the end of the war, Mike and others received graduate assistantships at Stanford University. After receiving his Ph.D., Mike undertook research at Stanford in communications and propagation. Through mathematical analysis and laboratory research, Mike led the development of a new way of generating high power SSB at the final amplifier. Around 1949, the Army Signal Corps placed a major contract with SRI, in collaboration with Stanford, to pursue this important topic.
Around 1970, Mike brought his over-the-horizon (OTH) radar staff and skill base to SRI. He continued and extended basic research, previously conducted at Stanford, and developed important engineering applications, often anticipating national defense needs.
At SRI, Mike developed advanced techniques for canceling target return signals from radar and sonar that resulted in reducing aircraft and submarine detection. This work led to important active and semiactive stealth technologies. Mike and his SRI associates directed the design and construction of important state-of-the-art measurement equipment that extended crucial experiments to higher frequencies.
Mike devised an inconspicuous antenna technique for nulling out communications jammer signals. This technology permitted people in oppressed countries to receive HF and MF Voice of America radio programs in spite of efforts by governments unfriendly to the United States to block that information. Later, Chinese students in this country, outraged by the Tienniman Square student killings, translated into Cantonese Mike's write-up for the antenna design. Mike received many requests for the paper from Mainland Chinese relatives.
Mike was practical, inventive, and intuitive—good at designing the decisive, definitive experiment. His vision, anticipating national defense needs, his imaginative solutions to critical problems, and his SRI leadership brought national recognition to him, his associates, and the Institute.
Bill Baker came to SRI from Southern Research Institute in 1956 with the mandate to help SRI develop a program in cancer chemotherapy. The timing was fortuitous because the National Institutes of Health through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) had just announced a major national effort to cure cancer. Bill put together a large research proposal involving 16 laboratory chemists plus a large support staff that was funded by the NCI. This project was SRI's start of a long-running research effort in cancer that continues in various forms to this day.
The cancer contract itself lasted for 25 years, first under the guidance of Baker for 5 years, then under Leon Goodman, Dave Henry, and Ed Acton for an additional 20 years. During Bill’s tenure, over 100 publications in the field of cancer chemotherapy appeared in refereed journals. These papers, plus innumerable presentations at symposia, put SRI on the map in the field of cancer research, and it enjoys a fine reputation in this area to this day.
Bill had extraordinary organizational abilities. He served on many government panels, often serving as chairman and frequently giving concluding summaries of the presentations and discussions. He also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and the Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry.
His legacy to SRI, in addition to giving SRI a world-wide scientific reputation, is still evident in the present staff and projects. Key patents in cancer therapy are currently being developed and compounds are under clinical trials. Active programs in antiviral research and carcinogenesis are still going. It is safe to say that the path followed by Life Sciences would be very different if Bill Baker had not been an early employee.
A native of Roslyn, Washington, Emery Bator received his B.A. in accounting and statistics from the State College of Washington in 1938. During the Second World War, he served as resident auditor with the U.S. Maritime Commission in Oakland, and from 1945 until joining SRI, he was auditor for the U.S. Controller General in San Francisco.
Emery Bator joined SRI in 1947 as one of the Institute's earliest employees (I.D. No. 13), soon after Dr. Weldon B. Gibson arrived. In fact Hoot Gibson hired him to set up the accounting system for SRI. He did an excellent job and ran a tight, very successful financial program for the Institute until his retirement 28 years later as Treasurer of SRI.
Emery provided not only a friendly leadership atmosphere, but an aura of stability to the SRI management system, which at times was not only needed but was critically important to the average employee. He was an efficient, innovative cash flow manager, who always found a way to smooth out the "exciting periods" when cash was really needed. Emery was very knowledgeable about contractual and financial maneuvering of both commercial and government clients and was able to resolve problems to the satisfaction of SRI as well as its clients.
Emery Bator was just what SRI needed during its startup time as well as in the following years of rapid growth.
Frances Bohley carried SRI's name, its logo, its programs, and its reputation to many parts of the world, opening the door for SRI professionals in their pursuit of multi-client and multi-country contracts in many fields of science, engineering, and business consulting. Fran and her associates were prime movers in expanding relationships with companies and executives in 50 or more countries.
Frances Bohley was an employee of SRI for about 26 years, beginning in 1954. She was Director of the SRI International Secretariat from July 1957 onward. The Secretariat, now a part of SRI's Executive Programs, was responsible for maintaining relationships with SRI's International Associates world wide.
During this entire time, very few people at SRI's headquarters knew Fran because she traveled so frequently abroad. Occasionally, she accompanied Dr. Gibson, but more often she traveled with members of her Secretariat staff. Her mission was to assist in arranging SRI-sponsored International Business Conferences in the major cities of Europe, Russia, South America, Japan, and throughout the Pacific Basin.
Fran played a key role in inaugurating the SRI International Industrial Conferences, which are still held every four years in San Francisco. The first was cosponsored by Time-Life with the personal support of Henry Luce, publisher. Since then, they have been co-sponsored by The Conference Board.
In arranging these conferences, Dr. Gibson traveled from country to country, meeting with senior business executives and government officials to negotiate conference objectives and principal themes. Fran generally followed later, meeting with the same executives and officials to reach agreement on specific topics and appropriate speakers—some local, some from other countries, and many from SRI. She also participated in the very sensitive task of preparing Invitation Lists, because all SRI Conferences were by invitation only, and all were routinely oversubscribed.
Fran was always meticulously prepared for meeting and negotiations, and because of her flawless demeanor and political sense, she quickly gained the respect of officials and executives at all levels. Henry Luce referred to her as "SRI's Treasure," and SRI Board Chairmen often described her as a "jewel" with global ties.
Charlie, or "CJ" as he later became known, was a strong and far-sighted builder at SRI. He started in 1954 as a physicist in the Chemical Physics Department under Clint Kelley, who made him Manager of the Molecular Physics Group in 1956. He first built an electron scattering apparatus to examine properties of sodium azide, a highly unstable explosive, for the Army. He was responsible for several important hirings as new work was acquired, and in 1962 became head of the Molecular Physics Department. Following a year spent in the famous Applied Mathematics Department at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, he invited three well known theorists from England and Northern Ireland to spend sabbaticals at SRI. These visits and the attendant lectures on atomic and molecular theory were very beneficial to the development and growth of the young Molecular Physics Department, and the action was typical of Cook's long-range outlook.
He was appointed Executive Director of Chemical, Theoretical, and Applied Physics in 1965 and of Physics and Chemical Physics in 1967. He became Executive Director of Plans and Programs, Physical and Life Sciences Division, in 1968 and of the Physical Sciences Division in 1969. He was the first to lead this division to a profitable operation. He became Vice President of the Office of Research Operations in 1976 and Senior Vice President, Office of the President, in 1981.
As he rose in responsibilities at SRI, his interests expanded from atomic and molecular physics to applications work, which included one of the first efforts to develop a magnetically levitated, very high speed, rail transit system and the use of automation in manufacturing.
Among his primary legacies to SRI is the Molecular Physics Laboratory, which ultimately gained international renown and has retained that stature today. He also turned Physical Sciences into a robust and healthy division for the first time.
Bart Cox started his education at San Jose State and finished at Stanford in communications engineering. Between the two was a small interruption—World War II—when Bart served as a glider crew member in the US Army in Europe. He was one of the engineers to join SRI in early 1951 and was assigned to the ERMA project shortly thereafter. ERMA was the conceptual design and implementation of a new computer system for the Bank of America. Bart's job was designing hardware systems.
When Bart Cox took on the job of Division Director for Information Sciences and Engineering (ISE), there were 7 laboratories of about 40 people each. Bart saw his job as one of nurturing his lab directors so as to make them successful. It was under Bart Cox's supervision that Doug Engelbart established the Augmentation Research Center, leading to a greatly increased reputation for SRI and its work. It was under Bart Cox's supervision that Charlie Rosen established the Applied Physics Lab which, through its pioneering work on neural networks by Ted Brain and, later, Nils Nilsson, evolved into the very highly regarded Artificial Intelligence Center.
Many labs grew and flourished under Bart's guidance and leadership. The bioengineering activity was launched around professionals like Hewitt Crane, James Bliss, and Phil Green. Kamphoefner's Control Systems Lab grew and thrived under Cox's direction. Likewise Jack Goldberg's Computer Science Lab. SRI today still shows the ongoing success of the groups that grew as a result of the seeds planted by Bart Cox.
In the 1980s Bart was asked to take SRI-wide responsibility for the technology management aspects of the Patents and Licensing operations. Here he worked with scientists and engineers to strengthen SRI's patent activities. He negotiated many technology and patent licenses with client companies. Recently SRI received a judgment for $37 million based on a complicated patent licensing case that Cox negotiated.
Bart Cox was a gentle and encouraging leader. He was inspiring to all who had the privilege of working with him during his long stay at SRI.
George Duvall received his PhD in physics from MIT in 1948, and went to work for General Electric in Richland, Washington. Tom Poulter hired George Duvall in 1953 on the recommendation of Dan McLachlan. Duvall immediately began to build the theoretical capability of the small group that was to become Poulter Laboratory. Over the years, he attracted several highly competent people: Bruno Zwolinski, Bill Drummond, Don Curran, Don Doran, Gordon Anderson, John Erkman, George Muller, and many others.
Duvall guided the staff in planning and interpreting experiments and in developing theoretical understanding of the phenomena. The theoretical underpinning of the nascent lab’s experimental work was crucial to its progress and remains a hallmark of its work today.
Duvall established the practice of writing internal reports—short informal articles on theoretical topics—as a means of communicating theoretical results throughout the group. He published regularly and encouraged and helped others to publish.
Under Duvall’s leadership, Poulter Lab became known internationally in theoretical and experimental shock physics circles.
Duvall was appointed Scientific Director of Poulter Lab in 1957, and was named Director in 1962. In 1965 Duvall moved to Washington State, where he established a Shock Physics Department that continues today under Yogi Gupta, another alumnus from Poulter Lab.
Duvall built the foundation for Poulter Lab’s theoretical activity that continues today. He established the strong international reputation of Poulter Lab that has been maintained for more than four decades.
Following his doctorate in physics from Cambridge, Dr. Eldredge was recruited to join SRI by Tom Morrin, the first Director of Engineering, to head up a new Instrumentation and Control Group. When he joined SRI in 1953, he was an immediate influence on our early direction in two major ways. First, Ken’s unusually broad background in industrial instrumentation was the catalyst for an explosive buildup of projects and staff that became the base for programs that still exist today at SRI. All the programs that have spun off from his lab, including Bioengineering, Graphic Sciences, Mechanical Engineering, and the Control Systems Lab, made a strong contribution to SRI's technical reputation and financial well being.
Second, Ken’s personal technical creativity and ingenuity led to the concept of Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR), as opposed to a bar code, for tagging and automatically sorting bank checks—a system still used today by the banking industry. The novelty of the idea led the US Patent Office to honor him with US Patent Number 3,000,000.
His group was soon working in sensors, lubrication, friction, and automatic inspection, but it was the fortuitous timing of an assignment to develop a machine for automatically sorting encoded bank checks (associated with the Bank of America ERMA project) that permitted explosive staff growth and the opportunity to show what could be done in the fields of high speed mechanical handling, character recognition, control circuitry, and ink chemistry
By 1956, the original staff of two had become the Control Systems Laboratory, with Electronics, Mechanical Development, and Basic Sciences Groups. The Basic Sciences Group became the Applied Physics Lab under Charlie Rosen, which eventually led to the Artificial Intelligence Center. The other component grew to become the Electron Devices Lab under Ivor Brodie. Ken Eldredge's significant contributions to SRI are still apparent today.
Doug Engelbart arrived at SRI in 1959 and spent 18 years building his vision of an interconnected community of knowledge workers. He built up SRI's Augmentation Research Center under difficult circumstances. He had the task to sell not only the sources of funding within the US Government agencies, but also to convince SRI management to make the investment required. He did this during the difficult times of the late 1960s when SRI was separating from Stanford University. Student uprisings, arguments about classified work on campus, and other major distractions were an everyday presence. Through all this, Doug maintained focus on his vision.
Doug's task was to build a new type of organization. He drew on others about him—Charlie Rosen, for instance, who steered him through some of the Washington funding obstacles and helped him in many ways. Doug operated his center as a family, with a very high degree of camaraderie. He recruited brilliant coworkers, many of whom have made a substantial name for themselves either at SRI or later at organizations like Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple Computer. His obvious drive and dedication set the highest example for his colleagues and support staff.
What he left behind at SRI is immense. First, any ongoing program in information systems draws on Doug's concepts and visions of an interactive community sharing knowledge. Second, anyone at SRI—or in the world—who picks up a mouse, sends e-mail, shares files with his neighbor, or enjoys the productive benefits of a personal computer is indebted to Doug Engelbart. His contributions to today's working society include the basic idea of hypertext, the "desktop" metaphor, multiple windows, file-sharing collaboration, distributed servers, and many other concepts that we take for granted today. The very idea of working with a computer interactively began in Doug Engelbart's group.
It is ironic that he is best known among lay people as the inventor of the mouse. In his 18 years at SRI, he proved that he was the consummate visionary of what we know today as the community of information workers. As Dr. David Liddell, Director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center once said, "What Doug described in the '50s and '60s, we are implementing in the '80s."
Bill Evans was among the first engineers to join SRI in 1949. As a television engineer with hands-on broadcast experience, he formed a new TV lab and rapidly built up a first-class television systems laboratory, attracting experienced engineers from several organizations. In the early 1950s, Bill investigated a new concept for a color picture tube based on a patent RCA had acquired, and the TV Lab, working with Phil Rice's Tube Lab, demonstrated versions of this new color tube and system, forerunner of the shadow-mask tube. SRI's TV Lab also developed the necessary electronics to allow Ampex's new videotape recorder to handle the more demanding requirements of color signals.
With dozens of patents, Bill was noted for his creativity and inventiveness. In the mid-1950s, his lab developed a very high-speed printing technique, the Videograph system. Using an electrostatic approach, they demonstrated the fastest printing system known at that time—capable of printing up to 20,000 characters per second. A joint program with A.B. Dick was set up to design and build a label printer for Time-Life, Inc. Printers were built that could print the labels for Life magazine, with a circulation of 10 million—printing 250,000 mailing labels per hour to get the job done in one week. These printers became the standard in the industry and provided all the high-circulation magazines with labels for many years.
Bill Evans shared the Vladimir Zworykin Television Prize with Philip Rice for their contributions to the advancement of television. In one of the most famous of SRI projects, Evans led the effort sponsored by Technicolor, Inc., to automate the film processing equipment to develop Technicolor film. The Negative Timer designed and delivered to Technicolor won the Technical Achievement Award—the Oscar—in 1959.
Bill's TV Lab continued to thrive, eventually becoming the Video Systems Lab, which took on broader and more diverse projects in television recording systems and satellite applications. Several laboratories and programs active today can trace their roots back to Bill Evans's TV Lab of the 1950s. Bill always was a strong leader and mentor to his staff. Those who had the privilege of working for him will always remember his friendly leadership and encouragement.
Dennis Finnigan was one of the key persons in building SRI’s reputation as an early leader in applications of operations research (OR) to industrial and business problems. One of several Stanford Business School graduates who formed its core, he was one of the more versatile leaders in SRI’s Economics and Management Group over four decades.
In the late 1950s, Dennis led OR projects on logistics problems for defense agencies. In the 1960s, he was Director of the Management Sciences Division during its rapid growth period, including information management, industrial operations research, systems analysis, new education technology, and the Naval Warfare Research Center.
Taking his expertise overseas, Dennis pioneered industrial OR work in Europe and became a favorite consultant to the Wallenberg industrial empire of Sweden. In the 1970s, under Dennis’ leadership, the SRI Scandinavia office in Stockholm became a center for modernization of European industry. Major restructuring projects were carried out for SAS airlines, Saab-Scania, and the Johnson group. For these contributions, Dennis was awarded the highest honor the King of Sweden gives to a non-Swedish citizen.
Dennis finished his career at SRI as Vice President in charge of international operations and marketing. He left behind a legacy of top-quality, innovative applications of operations research to solving both government and business problems.
Gustave Freeman, MD, pursued the highest quality of medical research to understand the pathogenesis of human cancer and respiratory diseases. As an extension of that legacy, he maintained a high level of expertise in his Department of Medical Sciences. In a highly competitive environment, he won grants from the National Public Health Service and the Environmental Protection Agency for a quarter of a century to support his research with his team at SRI.
He collaborated with other scientists in both the Life and Physical Sciences Divisions. With expertise in virology, Dr. Freeman advised SRI chemists that a compound they had synthesized as a potential anticancer agent for the National Cancer Institute should be evaluated for antiviral activity. It did prove to be active and was developed into the first successful antiherpes drug for human use. With physical chemists at SRI, he discovered the endogenous presence of nitric oxide (NO) and hemoglobin complex by electron spin-resonance. Simultaneously, he led his colleagues to complete a series of animal studies that modeled the pathogenesis of human respiratory diseases (emphysema and chronic obstructive lung disease). His studies proved that these diseases were caused in humans by common contaminants of air derived from industrial and automobile exhausts and tobacco smoke. The results were fundamental to national and international efforts in setting allowable limits of NOx and ozone contents in industrial exhausts and indoor air-quality standards.
In 1982, Dr. Freeman, as Acting Director, organized a competitive new group of scientists and established the Biotechnology Department, later the Biomedical Research Laboratory. Current activities in life sciences at SRI benefit from the Freeman legacy in terms of the academic excellence that continues to be characteristic of SRI's research in drug development, preclinical evaluation, or delivery for human cancer chemotherapy. With that legacy, SRI can continue to compete successfully with both the academic and industrial worlds while meeting the formal requirements of national regulatory agencies.
Hoot Gibson is widely known for his international leadership for the benefit of SRI and world economic and social development. In many countries, the names of “Hoot” Gibson and SRI became virtually synonymous.
He was hired by the fledgling Stanford Research Institute in 1946 as the third staff member and later founded the Economics Research Division—the seed of the Economics and Management (Business) Group, now SRI Consulting. He established the concept of techno-economic research at SRI, a blending of technical and economic research methods to solve real-world problems. He also established the International Associates Program, which brought in direct contributions for Institute facilities and became the core of SRI’s international research and consulting activities. He led SRI’s first international multidisciplinary project, in Italy.
He was a co-founder of the quadrennial International Industrial Conferences, the Pacific Basin Economic Council, and the Japan-Western US Association. He has been instrumental in founding techno-economic research institutes in several developing countries.
Within SRI, he sponsored the creation of novel research programs, established field offices, and mentored many younger staff members. He is author of two books on SRI’s early development: The Founding Years and The Take-Off Days. A star football player in college, he was named to the Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame. Before joining SRI, he received his MBA from Stanford, worked for a business machines company, and became a colonel in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
He has served as Executive Vice President of SRI, as a member of the Board of Directors, and Senior Advisor. He now is Senior Director Emeritus of SRI International.
A major legacy of Hoot's to SRI is the International Building. Hoot gathered donations of construction costs and gifts of furniture and art from friends and clients all over the world. This beautiful building would not exist without his efforts.
If you turn to page 147 of Hoot Gibson's book, SRI: The Founding Years, you will find a picture of Jane Goelet when she held the title of Office Manager in 1948. Jane came to SRI from the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago, as did Jesse Hobson, Tom Poulter, and other of her contemporaries.
Her first assignment was as a research assistant on an SRI project in Southern California. Then she moved to Menlo Park, where she "ran the office" and helped to recruit research assistants, secretaries, clerks, technicians, and other support personnel. She soon became their counselor and sometimes, when required, she arbitrated on their behalf. In short, she became SRI's first personnel management advisor.
When John Wagner joined SRI in 1954 as its chief human resources officer, Jane became the first member of his staff. She remained a member of SRI's personnel department all her remaining years, until she retired after 33 years of service.
Most of her service was as a recruiter, but in her later years she was transferred to the compensation staff where she was able to use her excellent sense of labor market conditions, especially during the period of nationwide double-digit inflation of both prices and labor rates.
Jane's legacy was the high quality of literally hundreds of support staff members who were hired by SRI only after they passed Jane's tough interviewing and testing process and after Jane appraised their skills as well as their character and integrity.
Behind her quiet demeanor, Jane had a keen sense for the genuine.
Bruce Graham came to SRI from Eastman Kodak in 1952 as a senior organic chemist. He quickly became head of the organic chemistry section and was the point man between SRI and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) when NCI was looking for chemistry laboratories to synthesize new anticancer agents. Bruce brought in Bill Baker from Southern Research Institute, and the die was cast for SRI in the field of cancer chemotherapy.
Bruce was then asked by E. Finley Carter, the SRI Executive Director at the time, to suggest a new area for SRI to develop. Bruce suggested life sciences and the Life Sciences Division was born. Bruce brought in many key people in addition to Baker to establish a good solid pharmaceutical research base—Gerald Lepage in biochemical oncology, Gus Freeman in medical science, Chozo Mitoma in biomedical research, and Mas Tanabe in pharmaceutical chemistry. These scientists made significant contributions to build the reputation of SRI as a world class pharmaceutical operation. At one point, SRI had more patents in pharmaceutical drug development than any other nonpharmaceutical company in the world.
The Life Sciences Division has seen many permutations and combinations since Bruce set it up in 1958. This is the mark of a vibrant organization that is able to adjust with the changing times and keep at the forefront of its area of expertise. It has always been high profile with respect to the world scientific community. Its continued existence at SRI is a tribute to the thoughts and planning by Bruce Graham in establishing it 40 years ago. It is worth noting that three of the key people that Bruce brought to the institute are included on the first list of the SRI Hall of Fame: Bill Baker, Gus Freeman, and Chozo Mitoma.
A native of Boston, Chuck Hilly received his LL.B. in 1941 from Northeastern University Law School. After being admitted to the bar, he practiced with his father, Charles F. Hilly, Sr., until 1942 when he entered flight training with the U.S. Navy. Later he helped organize the Boston branch of the Office of Naval Research by establishing basic contract policies and setting up research contracts with universities and other research organizations. He brought that expertise with him, first to Raytheon, where he was special assistant to the Administrative Vice President, and then to SRI in 1950.
For many years, Chuck was responsible for the Institute's contractual relationships with its many clients, both domestic and international. In the 1950s, as Contract Administrator, he handled negotiation and administrative details of government and commercial contracts and general SRI administration.
Chuck was able to work out feasible solutions to contracting problems with diverse organizations such as the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission as well as with international organizations such as the Italian government, the United Nations, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. At that time, very few of these groups had been involved to any extent with private contractors such as SRI.
Three specific contributions were his success in convincing contracting groups to award fixed fees on contracts with nonprofit contractors, his success in gaining approval by the U.S. Treasury to allow tax exemption for scientific research organizations such as SRI, and his advancement of the interests of SRI when serving as a member of contract research committees concerned with overhead recovery rates. His responsibilities grew in scope and complexity and, in 1967, he was appointed Assistance Vice President, Finance, for Contract Relations, and in the 1970s, he became Vice President of Contracts and Financial Services.
Chuck was crucially important to SRI's growth for his work in creating the structure, policies, and procedures that made up SRI's contracting procedures. Great credit is due to Chuck Hilly for developing a sound and successful contracting system for SRI.
Jesse Hobson was the second Director (now called President) of Stanford Research Institute. Dr. Hobson, an electrical engineer, came to SRI early in 1948, from a similar position at the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago, a well known contract research organization similar to what SRI was to become.
Hobson remained in his new SRI position until the end of 1955, when he resigned to enter private industry as a research consultant. By the time Hobson left SRI, after less than 8 years, the staff had increased from 40 to more than 1,000 and annual revenues had moved from $230,000 to beyond $10 million.
When Hobson arrived, SRI was indeed a small and slow-moving institute. Its annual report for 1947 had carried the theme that the Institute has been founded, but was not yet established. For lack of resources and other reasons, there was no development program for the future. Projects were sought first and professional staff later.
Hobson was distressed about the Institute's size, growth rate, inadequate equipment, space, practically no public relations program, and a bare minimum of service facilities and office space. However, he was highly enthusiastic about SRI's purpose, location, and possibilities for the future.
With help from his new colleagues, research and administrative, Hobson lost no time in developing an aggressive program. He laid it out and led the way with a new theme: "Simultaneous Action on Five Fronts."
The five fronts included almost all aspects of SRI's meager operations: a search for added staff first and projects second, instead of the reverse. He asked for some $325,000 to start his proposed development plan. He got only about a third of the amount needed to get a plan under way, but SRI was soon on its way, even with loans, contributions, and deficit financing.
For his accomplishments in getting SRI off the ground, great credit is due.
During World War II, Dr. Kamphoefner spent his time at Harvard in Dr. Fred Terman's Radio Research Lab. When Dr. Terman came to Stanford in the late 1940s, Kamphoefner came with him. Fred became the manager of the Industrial Electronics Lab in 1953. All the high-speed check handling systems for the ERMA project (Bank of America) were designed and developed by Kamphoefner's group. As a part of the project, several check-reading systems were analyzed using optics and magnetics. The winning approach used a stylized character, printed with a magnetic ink. This result, referred to as the Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) approach, was a huge success, allowing very high-speed reading of bank checks with a high degree of accuracy. This technology, developed over 30 years ago, is still used today to process hundreds of millions of bank checks world wide.
While managing his lab of about 50 professionals, Fred continued to promote new business in fields such as automated inspection, nonimpact printing, and character recognition. He established new programs with Recognition Equipment Corporation (handling systems for OCR), Sun Chemical Corporation (inks and toners and, later, new printing systems), and Eli Lilly Corporation (inspection of gelatin capsules). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dr. Kamphoefner recruited a group of very bright young control specialists in modern control theory. This group developed a fine reputation in control theory applied to transportation. Several of this group spun off to form Systems Control, Inc., which became very successful.
In 1984, Fred was named Associate Director of the Advanced Development Division, where working with Dr. Frank Greenman, he was responsible for the general management of seven Laboratories.
Fred left a great legacy to SRI. Not only in the organizational sense—six or seven labs are still active that he help to build—but in the personal and professional sense. Fred was a gentle and encouraging leader who helped his staff to excel.
Ray Leadabrand worked at SRI for most of his career. He began as an engineer and rapidly worked his way up through project leader, program leader, and lab director to Senior Vice President of the Engineering Research Group. He contributed in several ways to the US ABM programs, the Arrecibo radio telescope project, early radar investigations of the moon's surface, nuclear explosion phenomena, and advanced US communications technology.
Ray was always aware of the critical role that quality engineering work plays in a research program. He was ever on the lookout for ways to combine talent from various parts of Engineering to synthesize a novel and powerful combination to undertake difficult research problems. He actively sought out strong additions to the staff, encouraged present staff in education and seed IR&D projects, fought for proper recognition of his troops, and arranged for important consultants to augment our staff. He was particularly encouraging to young, bright staff members and offered them opportunities to develop new capabilities and to gain early recognition. His concern and respect for his staff earned him respect, friendship, and loyalty from the SRI engineering staff.
He is on a first name basis with many individuals high in the government, in universities, and in industry through his associations with SRI programs and through his extensive work on government advisory committees, which continues to this day. Ray was able to perceive the critical problems the government faces, often before the government did and to position SRI for important positions in high level national programs. Many of these programs continue today.
Under Ray's leadership, the SRI Engineering Research Group expanded significantly in scope and achieved a national reputation. Ray saw the importance of augmenting solid engineering talent with scarce or even unique laboratory facilities. For example, his support and sponsorship of the research vessel Acania for studies of ionospheric phenomena, a sensitive radar cross section compact range, a wave simulator, and ground-based and airborne lidar installations were all important factors in bringing important programs to SRI. Ray left behind an Engineering Research Group with a solid reputation for quality, objective research, a strong, talented staff, and an aggressive approach to challenging national problems.
Al Macovski joined SRI in 1960 as a senior television engineer in Bill Evans's TV Lab, where he led many projects on television technology. His background of ten years at RCA prepared him well for his SRI assignment.
He immediately became recognized as one of the most creative of all of SRI's staff, amassing hundreds of patents. To many people, Al was the most prolific of all of SRI's inventors. Almost all his projects were based on some new and novel idea of his. Today he has about 300 US patents.
The 3M Company asked SRI to investigate the possibility of recording television images on high-resolution photographic film, using an electron-beam technique. Al and his TV Lab coworkers worked with Phil Rice and his lab to develop an optical recording and playback system, avoiding the complexities of an electron-beam approach. They successfully demonstrated the first video disk recording/playback system in the early 1960s.
One of the most clever and creative contributions was Al's idea for recording color images on black-and-white film, which led to his invention of a single-tube color TV camera. Until that time, color television required three separate cameras, one for each of the primary colors. They had to be carefully registered, which increased the cost and complexity. RCA's sponsorship to continue the work led initially to very low cost studio cameras and finally to cheap home camcorder systems. The camcorders we see everywhere today use a single sensing array with color-encoding filters.
During all this prolific activity, Al worked on and received his Ph.D. at Stanford, specializing in real time holographic imaging. He also obtained a license as a patent agent, so that he was better able to file his own patent applications.
Those who had the privilege of working with him will never forget his gentle but firm encouragement and inspiration toward a high level of technical integrity and creativeness. He taught us all by example. By very creative hard work and a strong technical integrity, he was a true inspirational mentor to us all.
Frank Mayo was appointed a scientific fellow at SRI in mid-1956, following an almost 30-year career at the University of Chicago, Du Pont, U.S. Rubber Company, and GE. He was already an internationally recognized organic chemist and one of the pioneers in free radical chemistry, an area of chemistry of great importance for the chemical industry.
Frank wasted little time once at SRI in securing funding, by persuading the chemical industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan of the major benefits of a multisponsored, basic research program on oxidation of organic compounds. In sharing support of basic studies, chemical companies could access the results early and use them in proprietary applications in their own laboratories. Mayo also secured government funds for selected studies of oxidation, and the results were shared with the commercial sponsors, thereby enhancing the value of joining the Oxidation Program. Mayo's Oxidation Program was one of the largest and most successful multi- client programs in the sciences, then or now.
These programs continued for almost 15 years, produced significant scientific advances, and gave SRI great visibility in oxidation research. Mayo's reputation attracted to SRI many well-known or later-to-be well-known chemists, including Sid Benson, Dave Golden, Dale Hendry, Ted Mill, Dave Allara, Dick Hiatt, Dale Van Sickle, and Kurt Egger. From their work, new oxidation arenas evolved, such as smog studies, the environmental fate of chemicals, and oxidation in biological systems.
Frank's gifts were his attention to the scientific details of complex chemistry, a keen understanding how basic research can affect a company's business, and his impressive powers of persuasion with corporate vice presidents and lab directors.
Frank changed direction in the 1970s and 1980s to focus on coal chemistry and fuel oxidation with DOE and Army support and to run for national office in the American Chemical Society, where he did not get very far, probably because he ran on a populist agenda and was sometimes blunt in his assessment of others. Frank died with his boots still on in the fall of 1987 at 79 while attending a scientific meeting in the East.
Joe McPherson established the Innovation Management program at SRI, capping a world-recognized career in research and consulting in applied creativity. In doing so, he established a record for longevity of a “temporary” employee.
Joe was director of human resources development at Dow Chemical Company and editor of Creativity Review magazine when in 1965 he was offered a one-year fellowship at SRI while on sabbatical from Dow. He established a subprogram on creativity in the Theory and Practice of Planning program (TAPP) under Bob Stewart and quickly became a regular speaker in the Executive Seminars in Business Planning. He never returned to Dow.
McPherson’s chart on Idea Killers was translated into many languages and displayed in hundreds of offices around the world.
About 1969, he designed the first Innovation Search—a structured approach to bringing out the latent ideas of employees and friends of a corporation—as a source of new or “renewed” products, expanding markets, and innovations in the internal operations of a company. Innovation Search projects for clients always involved staff members selected from SRI technical laboratories, often resulting in follow-on research opportunities. Searches were conducted for clients in England, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, and other countries and for government agencies as well as for some SRI internal organizations.
Joe also produced a series of reports on creativity, on innovation management, and on managing social change for the Business Intelligence Program, spreading his expertise among over 400 clients. Variations on the Innovation Search process have proliferated in the consulting industry.
Joe was so open, enthusiastic, and encouraging, you always did for Joe—not just your best work—but the best work you had ever done.
Arnold Mitchell crowned a 37-year career at SRI with the creation of the Values and Life Styles (VALS) program—a pioneering method of applying psychographics to business management and marketing research. VALS grew out of Arnold’s longtime interest in how people’s values influenced the way they lived and made consumer decisions. It was cited by research executives in a poll by Advertising Age magazine as “one of the ten top market research breakthroughs of the 1980s.” VALS continues as a major component of SRI Consulting’s activities.
Arnold came to SRI in 1948 from McGraw-Hill, as an editor of research reports. In 1963, his broader capabilities were recognized when he became research director of the Long Range Planning Service (predecessor of the Business Intelligence Program). There, he specialized in taking the research achievements of SRI staffers and converting sometimes nerdy technical reports into standard business English that could be understood by typical clients. He helped train many young staffers in the art of writing clear, terse business reports, imposing standards of excellence seldom matched in business writing. Especially, he mentored several women staffers who achieved professional recognition in their own right.
All this time, he pursued his own interest in the changing cultural aspects of people. He persuaded SRI management to sponsor the new multiclient program on Values and Life Styles (VALS), which continues to be a leading—and widely copied—guide to product planners and marketers worldwide. Granted one of SRI’s first McBean Fellowships, he used the time to write Nine American Life Styles (McMillan, 1983), which became a business best seller.
Chozo Mitoma’s 40-year span of pioneering research efforts and marketing contributions to the science and art of biochemical pharmacology left an indelible legacy for SRI’s present research and commercial service contracts focused on drug discovery and development within the Pharmaceutical Discovery Division as well as the Biopharmaceutical Development Division of SRI.
Because of Dr. Mitoma’s efforts, the vitally important Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, and Excretion (ADME) studies are now required by the US Food and Drug Administration and by all other international regulatory agencies that mandate and oversee the official approval of all new prescription drugs. Chozo initiated the groundwork at SRI in the maturation and official acceptance by regulatory agencies of ADME studies or other pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies conducted at SRI. He hired and trained staff in this very important subset of mandatory requirements for final drug and chemical approval by various drug and chemical regulatory agencies. Many of SRI’s present staff active in this field trace their roots to Chozo’s pioneering efforts, influence, and research activities.
Chozo’s established reputation and influence also facilitated marketing efforts and contacts with a host of clients in government circles, such as NIH, EPA, FDA, NCI, and DOD, as well as in the commercial sector of pharmaceutical companies (large and small), the chemical industry, food and agricultural chemical companies, and the growing biotechnology industry.
Chozo laid the base for our past, present, and future client roster in this growing and important business and research sector at SRI, which requires reliability, reproducibility, accuracy, and above all skill and integrity—all the hallmarks of Dr. Mitoma.
When SRI's Antenna Systems Laboratory was divided up, Dr. Tetsu Morita became director of a major portion of the remainder—the Electromagnetic Sciences Laboratory. Tetsu was a superb experimenter and had a remarkable ability to recognize important, evolving technical areas and to get established in them at minimum cost. He also surrounded himself with people who could carry on in this manner, gradually changing as the technology grew.
Tetsu often proved that good experiments could be done with only a modest expenditure for instrumentation. For example, he learned that NASA was planning to build a massive shock tube to study plasma formation around a reentry vehicle. He decided that we could very inexpensively build a smaller version and conduct several years of meaningful experiments before the NASA system became operational. He was right, and our shock tube was used for years as we explored important reentry problems.
When he asked, "Could we get a flame to burn in a vacuum chamber?" we saved funds by making the vacuum chamber from an old mattress sterilizer left over from the days when SRI was an Army hospital. We used the chamber for studying another set of reentry vehicle problems. When NASA speculated whether satellite measurements of the ocean surface might be used to provide wind information for meteorologists, Tetsu arranged for the construction of a wind-tunnel-driven water wave tank in the lab to generate surface waves that could be studied using electromagnetic illumination. This facility, too, was assembled at lost cost, using common construction materials and second-hand blowers.
Tetsu regularly visited clients and potential clients to review ongoing programs and develop new ones. He always took a lab member along on these trips, with the result that all the lab staff became adept at program planning and marketing and developed familiarity with a substantial group of sponsors. The degree to which Tetsu prepared laboratory staff in all aspects of doing research in the area of electromagnetics is shown by the smoothness with which the lab was able to continue to develop when health problems forced Tetsu to retire. In fact, the largest current contract at SRI ($8 million a year) is one started when Tetsu was Lab Director.
Jean Nelson was a versatile pioneer among women researchers, who altered her own career as SRI’s and clients’ needs changed. A graduate of Vassar near the end of World War II, she entered the U. S. Foreign Service, serving among other places in Rumania.
Returning to the United States about 1959, Jean joined SRI’s Naval Warfare Research Center as a historian and specialist on Eastern Europe. Based on her background in the Pacific Northwest, she also participated in SRI studies of economic development prospects for certain US Indian tribes.
When NWRC’s research needs changed, Jean moved over to the Long Range Planning Service (LRPS), as program manager on the effects of social changes on business. She was the first woman at that level in SRI’s Economics and Management group. Her 1966 pioneering study on the state of the art in forecasting social change was a “best seller.”
Over the protest of some senior executives, she became the first woman to present a paper at SRI’s annual LRPS Client Conference and was voted best speaker of that meeting. Two years later, she became research director of LRPS (later the Business Intelligence Program).
Not only was she responsible for research programming and quality control, she cajoled many SRI technical experts into writing business-oriented reports and mentored many younger staff members in the rigors of SRI research and report-writing standards.
Gordon was a very early employee at SRI (ID No. 182), coming here in 1950. He was one of the founders of the Toxicology Department at SRI and developed commercial relationships in toxicology with many companies such as Shell Development, Alcoa, and US Steel. These research relationships continued for many years and the Toxicology Department thrived. When the Life Sciences Division was created in 1958, Toxicology was one of the founding departments and it continued to thrive, long after Gordon left SRI to join the staff of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.
Gordon was appointed Assistant General Manager of the Life Sciences Division under Bruce Graham. In this position, his input was a contributing factor in the development of the division. He established the Animal Care Department shortly before the National Cancer Institute came to SRI to set up cancer research programs. As a result, SRI was ready to start a large animal screening program that was integrated with the program to synthesize agents and thus create a large, comprehensive cancer program funded originally by NCI. This program continues to this day with wider funding and significantly broader focus.
Gordon was the primary inspiration in moving SRI’s toxicology work away from large-scale, whole animal testing to using sophisticated in vitro models. He brought in young investigators who built SRI’s reputation in the area of rapid detection of chemical carcinogens and mutagens. He identified the trend into government support of the testing of environmental chemicals and vigorously worked to bring this type of business to SRI.
Newell promoted SRI throughout out the world. He established many contacts in Japan. He served on many international committees in the field of toxicology and animal sciences including AAALAC, Society of Toxicology, and the Environmental Mutagen Society, helping to build SRI’s reputation and contracts among his peers.
Gordon’s legacy to SRI was the establishment of a strong toxicology department that can adapt to with trends in science and in funding priorities.
Nils Nilsson joined the recently formed Learning Machines Group of the SRI Applied Physics Lab under Charlie Rosen in August 1961. This group was then engaged in pioneering R&D in the field of perceptrons—the forerunner of present-day parallel-processing neural networks that can be programmed to "learn by example," aimed at simulating biological learning processes. Nils soon established himself as a major contributor and theoretician of the group and shortly became the head of the Learning Machine Group. His first book, Learning Machines, published by John Wiley in 1965, established him as a major authority in this field and served as a first text for graduate students at leading universities.
In 1965, Nils, together with Milt Adams and Charles Rosen, submitted a comprehensive proposal to DARPA, which funded a multiyear program in Artificial Intelligence, leading to the development of a computer-controlled mobile robot, Shakey. This platform served as a test-bed for applied research in Machine Vision, pattern recognition, natural language understanding, problem-solving, planning, navigation, and obstacle avoidance—all major topics in AI. Nils was the project leader of this major program, which attained world-wide notice and acclaim. This work sparked the initiation of similar programs in many leading universities and industrial labs and produced important theoretical and empirical results and computer programs that are still in use today.
Nils's early seminal contributions to learning machine theory, his leadership and technical contributions to the Shakey robot program, and his directorship of the SRI Artificial Intelligence Center were major factors in establishing SRI as an internationally recognized center of research in AI—a reputation that persists to this day.
After many years of outstanding leadership at SRI, Nils was recruited by Stanford University and became Chairman of the Department of Computer Sciences. Nils has just completed a major new book on artificial intelligence and is now Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. He left behind a vigorous and thriving AI Center at SRI.
Bill Platt was an SRI pioneer in the evolution of operations research, ranging from solving military problems to industrial and social applications worldwide. In the late 1950s, he organized the Management Sciences Division and was instrumental in forming a leadership team that included many of its stars, including Dennis Finnigan, Peter Butterfield, Bob Harker, Rogers Cannell, Al Shapiro, Dick Singleton, Howard Vollmer, and Bill White.
When the Management Sciences Division was well established, in 1961, Platt saw a need for a different approach to SRI’s work in regional economics and human resources, so he formed a new Economic Development Division that combined these fields, both domestic and international. During this period, SRI’s International Development Center was a leading contractor of the US Agency for International Development and the Ford Foundation in India, Cyprus, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Cameroons, the Philippines, and other countries. Platt also supervised Eugene Staley’s team, which published six volumes of studies on small-scale industry development, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
The Economic Development Division also had successful programs in real estate research and recreation economics. These included research for professional sports leagues and feasibility studies for stadiums and convention centers.
During this same period, Platt organized a team to apply advanced education technologies and methods, developed under military contracts, to civilian education. His innovative approach to the human resources side brought him a contract from the United Nations to design and establish a center for such research. A successful design led Bill to resign from SRI and head up the new center in Paris, where he finished his career.
Tom (Doc) Poulter came to SRI in 1948 from Armour Research Foundation (now ITTRI) in Chicago, along with Jesse Hobson. Hobson came to be the Director (today called the president), and Poulter came to be Associate Director. Poulter’s fame (two Congressional Medals of Honor for polar exploration) added greatly to SRI’s stature.
Poulter immediately got involved with the Physics Department, which led shortly to the establishment of the Explosives and Extreme Pressure Laboratory. In 1953 the Lab had a staff of less than 10; by 1955 it had grown to over 50 and was one of the strongest units of SRI—now named the Poulter Laboratory. Poulter attracted to SRI people who would figure prominently in the future of the unit, among them George Duvall, Don Davenport, Milt Kells, Wes Farrand, and Chuck Bagley.
By 1955 the Calaveras Test Site was well established as one of the best equipped explosives test sites west of the Mississippi. It was staffed mainly by physicists and technicians recruited from Los Alamos.
Around 1958, Poulter brought aboard a propulsion group from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The leaders of the group were Pete Nichols and Rafael Muraca. Poulter led the construction of a modern propulsion lab for the new group at Calaveras. He also hired Marion Hill from the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. Eventually the propulsion lab became part of the Chemistry Lab with Marion Hill as its director.
Poulter’s last official position at SRI was General Manager of Physical and Life Sciences. After he retired from administrative duties in 1960, he started a new career in the biological sonar of diving mammals and established the Bio-Sonar Laboratory in Coyote Hills across the bay from Menlo Park. When the lab closed in 1973, he continued to frequent SRI’s labs and hallways showing his latest scientific activities. He also lectured at the SRI noon forum from time-to-time, regaling us with stories of his very interesting life, including being Second in Command on the Byrd Antarctic Expedition. At the time of his death in 1978, he had just demonstrated electronic implants in the ear to restore hearing to the totally deaf, working with Dr. Robin Michelson of the UC Medical School in San Francisco.
Doc Poulter was a key figure in the early success of SRI. His name continues to be seen in the world renowned lab that bears his name.
Ed Robison contributed more to SRI’s accomplishments in the developing world than anyone except Hoot Gibson. As a Stanford Business School graduate, he was working for a sugar company in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded, getting out just in time. He was on General MacArthur’s staff in the restructuring of Japan’s government.
Ed joined SRI in early 1950s, led a number of regional economic development studies in the United States, including some of SRI’s earliest work on behalf of American Indian tribes. Then he took leadership of our development work in India, under Ford Foundation sponsorship, leading two programs that involved a variety of industry experts and business development specialists over ten years. First was a research and advisory program on small-scale industry development, led by Eugene Staley. The other was establishment of the National Council for Applied Economic Research. Both activities still continue in India.
Ed was an advisor to members of the India Planning Commission, especially pressing for a greater role for private enterprise over government domination. Meanwhile, he negotiated projects for the US Agency for International Development and World Bank in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He also helped establish new economic research institutes in several countries.
Ed served in the 1960s as Executive Director of the SRI Economics and Management Group. During all this time, he mentored many new staff members, showing them how to write proper proposals and how to get along in foreign cultures.
Charlie Rosen, scientist and visionary, came to SRI in the late 1950s. He founded the Applied Physics Laboratory, which began work on etching out millions of tiny triodes to compete with transistor circuits. One giant problem with millions of tiny triodes was how to wire them up to perform useful functions. When Charlie heard about perceptrons (now called neural networks), which could be "trained" to perform many tasks, especially pattern recognition, he speculated that these self-organizing, self-training algorithms might provide just the answer to harnessing a million triodes. So he began research on perceptrons.
Charlie loved high-risk, frontier science! Thus the Learning Machines Group was created in the early 1960s within the Applied Physics Laboratory to attempt this exciting enterprise of designing, building, and using neural networks. Charlie's limitless enthusiasm and convincing vision inspired co-workers and persuaded the Office of Naval Research and the Army Signal Corps to support this research. SRI perceptron systems achieved impressive results, including classification of symbols on Army maps and accurate recognition of hand-printed characters on FORTRAN coding sheets.
As the intellectual neighborhood around these systems became familiar territory, Charlie got restless and moved on to artificial intelligence (AI),which ultimately led to Shakey the Robot, and the Learning Machines Group became the Artificial Intelligence Center. The Shakey project generated several very important AI technologies that are still important today, almost 30 years later.
During the 1970s, SRI's AI Center became, under Charlie's leadership, one of the world's foremost AI laboratories, expanding to work in speech recognition, natural language processing, expert systems, computer vision, and robotics. In the mid-1970s, Charlie formed a Robotics Group within the AI Center. One of the important inventions was a very robust machine vision system capable of recognizing industrial parts as they came down conveyor belts.
When Charlie left SRI for his new start-up, he left behind a thriving AI Center that still displays his traits of optimism, creativity, and a desire to tackle some of engineering's toughest challenges—those of mechanizing the numerous facets of human intelligence. We are still probably a long way from achieving that goal, but that wouldn't have scared Charlie!
Felix Smith was a strong voice for basic science at SRI After Charlie Cook was promoted to chair the Chemical Physics Division, which later became the Physical Sciences Division, Felix became head of the Molecular Physics Laboratory (MPL), which he led until 1980. He actively built up the laboratory by adding quality staff and establishing a postdoctoral program, which became the main route for acquiring new staff. Dave Huestis, Don Eckstrom, and Dave Crosley—all now leaders in MPL—came aboard during Felix's leadership. People such as Ron Olson, Tom Gallagher, and John Moseley—who all went on to professorships in major universities after 10 years or more at SRI—established their reputations in MPL under Felix.
In addition to leading the laboratory to world renowned stature in atomic and molecular physics, Felix gave strong support to a major program of laser research, which became a significant activity in the MPL and provided new directions for the lab. This was all accomplished while Felix conducted his own forefront theoretical research in the field of atomic collisions, which established him as a world class theoretical physicist.
Felix was a strong spokesman for the rights of individual researchers at SRI. He was particularly active during the Stanford-SRI confrontation in 1969 when Stanford was planning to place restrictions on the kind of research that could be conducted at SRI. He helped educate Stanford and its Board of Directors about SRI, its professional stature, and its role in research for society and helped ease the separation from Stanford.
During this period, Felix recognized the need for better communication between staff and management and spearheaded the effort to establish the Institute Staff Advisory Group (ISAG). ISAG, composed of nonmanagement staff, was a strong forum for addressing internal SRI problems and discussing solutions with management. Felix served as ISAG's first president and led the effort to make it operational and to become a long term upward communications channel for SRI that existed for almost 20 years.
In 1948, Bob Smith brought his Stanford Business School training to help develop SRI’s techno-economic research leadership. He helped to develop many staff members who became stars in their fields.
Bob erupted every few years with an idea that changed the research business. In early 1950s, he instigated the Western Economic Development Conferences that established SRI as the premier research organization in the West. He helped develop the Chemical Information Services, which are still hallmarks of SRI. In the mid-1950s, he secured internal support for a ground-breaking study of “Why Companies Grow” that was published in Harvard Business Review and laid the groundwork for the corporate strategy program.
In 1956, he proposed a research-based forecasting program to help corporate planners do a better job, while showcasing the talents at SRI available to clients. Launched in 1958, the Long Range Planning Service (LRPS) was born. Within five years it had over 400 clients, and its annual client conferences were attended by 300 or more executives from the best companies. As a spin-off, in 1965 Smith proposed the first Executive Seminars in Business Planning, which attracted over 1,000 participants from more than 300 companies over the next 6 years. The program’s successor, the Business Intelligence Center, in 1998 celebrates its fortieth anniversary of continuing service to worldwide business.
Meanwhile, Bob headed corporate strategy projects for such clients as Foremost Dairies, Del Monte, Anheuser-Busch, Bekins, General Foods, and the Swedish and Saudi governments.
Bob opened SRI’s first European office, in Zurich, and helped establish SRI as a preferred source of assistance for European clients. In 1968, Smith and Bill Royce introduced the SRI system of planning to a class at Nomura Research Institute in Japan and later taught it to numerous Japanese clients.
Bob Shreve was one of the versatile Stanford MBA graduates who, shortly after World War II, did a little bit of everything to build the fledgling SRI Economics Research Division. His specialties included project management, industrial operations research, feasibility studies, transportation economics, staff planning and budgeting, industrial marketing—and rescuing projects in trouble.
For much of this 30-year period, Bob’s organizational assignment was as business manager of the Economics and Management Group. His job included not only group planning, budgeting, and cost controls but teaching staff members how to prepare proposals and project budgets, project staffing, and time management—how to complete projects on time and within budget. He also taught many new program managers how to organize and manage their activities. He interviewed hundreds of prospective staff members, and his instincts were generally correct on who would be a good addition to SRI staff.
During this same time, Bob was frequently called on for project work—rescuing projects in trouble, augmenting professional staff, preparing proposals, negotiating major contracts, and conducting field research. Such assignments took him to the Philippines, Spain, London, the Middle East, Scandinavia, and elsewhere.
Bob’s legacy to SRI was a prime example of quiet leadership, integrity, and reliability in meeting client’s expectations while upholding the high standards of SRI research and fiscal soundness.
W. A. “Bill” Skinner came to SRI in 1955 and worked in the organic chemistry group in Physical Sciences for about 5 years. He transferred to the Life Sciences Division and headed a research group on the cancer project under Bill Baker for 2 years, where he got his indoctrination into medicinal chemistry. When Baker left in 1961, the chemists in Life Sciences were split into two groups with Skinner heading the department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. In this position, he made many valuable contacts in Japan that proved very beneficial for him and the department in the coming years.
When Bruce Graham left SRI in 1965, Bill was appointed director of the Life Sciences division, a position that he held until his death in 1987. As Executive Director (later, Vice President) of the Division, he continued many existing programs, expanded some, such as Neurological Sciences, eliminated some, such as Food Sciences, and in general kept the division tuned to the areas of potential profit to the institute. He greatly expanded the scientific interests of the Division, from a focus almost exclusively on cancer treatment to expertise in many diseases. He led the efforts to study the treatment and prevention of malaria and other parasitic diseases, and he fostered the Division’s expansion into research on environmental health problems. During Bill’s 22year tenure, he greatly expanded the Division’s client base to include not only NIH but the US Army, the EPA, and domestic and international companies. This diversity can be seen in the 125 scientific papers and 13 patents Bill published.
Bill was an initiator and a major contributor (with Mas Tanabe, Chozo Mitoma, and Gordon Newell) to the development of a close and profitable (to SRI) working relationship with the Japanese Pharmaceutical industry—a relationship that continues to this day. Over 50 International Fellows, mainly from Japan, worked in life sciences laboratories during this period, and many long-term R&D efforts were begun. The Japanese industry leaders he worked closely with thought so highly of Bill that, just before his death, they were in the process of naming a city street after him in one of the company towns in Japan.
Skinner’s legacy to SRI was a vigorous life sciences enterprise, able to react with changing outside priorities, that was well known in government research agencies and the international pharmaceutical industry.
Mimi's real interest was in applying herself to work that would lead to improving the education of children. After completing her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, Mimi joined the National Center for Educational Research and Development of the US Department of Education. There, she served as technical monitor for the original grant to the Children's Television Workshop for the development of Sesame Street.
Mimi joined SRI's Education Department as a young research associate. Her major projects included the national evaluation of Follow-Through (the program providing follow-up services to children who had participated in Head Start). She engineered SRI's entry into the field of special education with a landmark study of implementation of PL-94-142, the "mainstreaming" law requiring that children with disability be educated in a setting that maximized their contact with children without disabilities. As part of these studies, she helped to develop the multiple case study methodology that remains a major tool in program evaluation.
Mimi assumed leadership of the Health and Social Sciences Division in 1982, a time when the political climate in Washington was not kind to social science research. Mimi led the division through these difficult years, instilling in her staff the certain belief that survival—and eventually growth—would come from good research, creatively conceived and effectively communicated. On that solid foundation, she developed active research programs in education policy, special education, integrated social services, and advanced instructional technology.
Among her staff, Mimi was held in deep affection. In everything she did, it was clear how much she cared about doing good research and how much she believed in the capabilities of SRI's researchers. Throughout both SRI and the education research community, Mimi was known for her tremendous energy, strong convictions, self- effacing candor, and unstinting integrity.
Mimi was remarkable in the depth of her concern for the professional growth of others. SRI's highest award for fostering the professional development of others was established in Mimi's memory. In this way, her contribution to our growth continues.
Larry Swift earned his Bachelors in electrical engineering from Texas University in 1927. At the time, GE was offering top seniors the opportunity to attend GE's Trade Design School in Schenectady, NY. Here Larry got a thorough grounding in the theoretical aspects of instrumentation systems and graduated in 1930.
He joined Seismograph Services Corporation (SSC), where he soon became Chief Design Engineer. During this period, SSC and Swift supplied the geophysical instruments to Dr. Thomas C. Poulter for use in the Antarctic during the 1933 Byrd expedition. In 1948, Dr. Poulter induced Larry to come to SRI as the Assistant Director of the Geology and Geophysics Department.
In 1952, SRI got into the measurement of blast effects of atomic and nuclear weapons. The initial measurements were high explosive shots at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The government had contracted with Engineering Research Labs (ERA) and a 20-person crew to measure 50 channels of data using oscilloscopes and 35mm cameras. This method proved so clumsy that ERA was able to get data on only half of the channels. Larry Swift and SRI introduced instrumentation based on seismic cameras using moving mirror galvonometers and photo print paper. With a 7-person crew, SRI recorded 120 channels of data, missing only one. The data gathered was so far superior to previous data gathered (according to those analyzing it) that SRI became the primary data recording and analysis organization for the long series of tests at the Nevada and Pacific Test Sites, lasting into the 1960s. During this series, Larry Swift and Coye Vincent introduced the magnetic tape recorder as a successful recording instrument for nuclear data recording.
As a result of the strong reputation established by Larry Swift and his colleagues, in the late 1950s Poulter Lab was given an opportunity to participate in the new Air Force program on nuclear weapon effects on reentry vehicles. Poulter Lab played a major role in the new program for over 30 years and the work continues today.
As head of the Physics Department, growing it to a Division from 1955 to 1970, Bob Vaile made a name for the staff of SRI's Physics Division as experts in airblast and ground motion effects of nuclear explosions. For nearly 20 years, research in these areas was the focus of the Physics Division, furnishing critical information to the Department of Defense as the country wrestled to maintain superiority in the Cold War.
Bob was encouraged to come to SRI in 1948 by former classmate at the California Institute of Technology Jesse Hobson, who had recently been named Director of SRI. Bob's first research task was to lead a project, funded by major oil, utility, and railroad companies, to discover the cause of ground subsidence that had plagued the Long Beach area, causing extensive damage over time. The issue was whether water or oil was the cause. Depending on the results, some of the project's clients stood to lose large amounts of money. Bob was able to bring respect to the fledgling SRI by adroitly writing the final report so that it remained true to the scientific findings, yet did not offend the clients.
Bob's own idea of a frangible backfill to protect missile silos from ground motion, by surrounding a silo with material that would fail at the right pressures to reduce the blast energy on the silo, was tested at Nevada Test Site and proved to be a valid concept.
Bob's reputation among the Physics Division's clients, military and civilian, as an outstanding leader enhanced SRI's value by his astute reviews of project reports, particularly those that went to clients. Clients and researchers today still recall his diligence in ensuring that SRI's work received the best report possible.
As a result of the strong reputation established by Bob Vaile and his colleagues, in the late 1950s, Poulter Lab was given an opportunity to participate in the new Air Force program on nuclear weapon effects on reentry vehicles. Poulter Lab played a major role in the new program for over 30 years, and the work continues today.
John Wagner was SRI's first chief human resources officer, having come from Cutter Laboratories in 1954. He was with SRI until 1964 and held the modest title of Personnel Services Administrator. When he arrived the staff numbered a few hundred, when he left it numbered 2500. His emphasis was always on the word "services," and he made certain that all members of his staff clearly understood that their role was to serve the Institute.
One of John's first jobs was to reconcile some of the differing personnel practices and procedures that various units of the Institute had adopted during the eight years of SRI's existence before John's arrival. On some issues, John encountered considerable acrimony, especially when some departments believed there were in danger of losing their "proprietary rights." Much of that acrimony was directed at John, the messenger- negotiator. However, John persevered, and the result was a small booklet titled "You and SRI." This booklet later became SRI's comprehensive Personnel Policy and Procedures Manual. John had laid the foundation.
John prided himself particularly on taking the lead in replacing SRI's weak retirement plan with a strong and stable TIAA/CREF plan. Again, he became the negotiator and he helped craft a somewhat controversial SRI contribution schedule, which was "age related" as well as "service related." The schedule took into account that, in its early years, SRI had recruited not only young staff members, but also numerous mature research professionals and managers.
John's greatest legacy was the staff he recruited into his own department. If a manager is to be judged by the staff he recruits, develops, and sends forth, then John deserves high credits. Three of his professional recruits compiled a combined service record of over 80 years at SRI. So well trained were they that they survived numerous managerial changes in the human resources area. One of John's professional recruits later joined SRI's Management Consulting Group and later returned to serve four years as SRI's chief human resources officer.