John R. Pierce
John Robinson Pierce | |
---|---|
Born | March 27, 1910 Des Moines, Iowa, US |
Died | April 2, 2002 | (aged 92)
Awards | Stuart Ballantine Medal (1960) IEEE Edison Medal (1963) IEEE Medal of Honor (1975) Marconi Prize (1979) Japan Prize (1985) |
John Robinson Pierce (March 27, 1910 – April 2, 2002), was an American engineer and author. He did extensive work concerning
At Bell Labs
Pierce wrote about
The way I provided the name, was to think of what the device did. And at that time, it was supposed to be the dual of the vacuum tube. The vacuum tube had transconductance, so the transistor would have 'transresistance.' And the name should fit in with the names of other devices, such as varistor and thermistor. And ... I suggested the name 'transistor.'
— John R. Pierce, interviewed for PBS show "Transistorized!"
Pierce's early work at
Pierce is widely credited for saying "Nature abhors a vacuum tube", but Pierce attributed that quip to Myron Glass.[5] Others[6] say that quip was "commonly heard at the Bell Laboratories prior to the invention of the transistor".
Other famous Pierce quips are "Funding artificial intelligence is real stupidity", "I thought of it the first time I saw it", and "After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy."
The National Inventors Hall of Fame has honored Bernard M. Oliver[7] and Claude Shannon[8] as the inventors of PCM,[9] as described in 'Communication System Employing Pulse Code Modulation,' U.S. patent 2,801,281 filed in 1946 and 1952, granted in 1956. Another patent by the same title was filed by John Pierce in 1945, and issued in 1948: U.S. patent 2,437,707. The three of them published "The Philosophy of PCM" in 1948.[10]
Pierce did significant research involving
Pierce directed the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee that produced the
Life after Bell Labs
After quitting Bell Laboratories, he joined
In 1980 he retired from Caltech and accepted his final job at
Many of Pierce's technical books were intended to introduce a semi-technical audience to modern technical topics. Among them are Electrons, Waves, and Messages; An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals, and Noise; Waves and Ear; Man's World of Sound; Quantum Electronics; and Signals: The Science of Telecommunication.[14]
Pierce was elected to the United States
Personal life
Besides his technical books, Pierce wrote science fiction using the pseudonym J.J. Coupling, which refers to the total angular momenta of individual particles.[20] John Pierce also had an early interest in gliding and assisted the development of the Long Beach Glider Club in Los Angeles, one of the earliest glider societies in the United States. According to Richard Hamming "you couldn't talk to John Pierce without being stimulated very quickly".[21]
Pierce had been a resident of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Pasadena, California, and later of Palo Alto, California.[22]
During his later years, as a visiting professor at
The papers of John R. Pierce are at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.[23]
At his death Pierce was survived by his wife Brenda; a son—science fiction editor John Jeremy Pierce—and a daughter, Elizabeth Anne Pierce.[24]
See also
- ALPAC report
References
- .
- ^ Saxon, Wolfgang (April 5, 2002). "John Robinson Pierce, 92, A Father of the Transistor". The New York Times. Retrieved January 8, 2020.
- ^ Kompfner, Rudolf, The Invention of the Traveling-Wave Tube, San Francisco Press, 1964.
- ^ J. R. Pierce, Traveling-Wave Tubes, New York: van Nostrand Co., 1950
- ^ John R. Pierce (1991). "My Work With Vacuum Tubes At Bell Laboratories". Vintage Electrics. 3 (1). Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation.
- ISBN 0-252-02383-8.
- ^ "Bernard Oliver". National Inventor's Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on December 5, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
- ^ "Claude Shannon". National Inventor's Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on December 6, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
- ^ "National Inventors Hall of Fame announces 2004 class of inventors". Science Blog. February 11, 2004. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
- ^
B. M. Oliver; J. R. Pierce; C. E. Shannon (November 1948). "The Philosophy of PCM". Proceedings of the IRE. 36 (11): 1324–1331. S2CID 51663786.
- ^ "JOHN R. PIERCE (1910–2002) INTERVIEWED BY HARRIETT LYLE 1979" (PDF).
- ^ John R. Pierce (1990). "Telstar, A History". SMEC Vintage Electrics.
- ^ "John Robinson Pierce," Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, May 2002, p.69
- ^ John R. Pierce and A. Michael Noll, SIGNALS: The Science of Telecommunication, Scientific American Books (New York, NY), 1990.
- ^ "John R. Pierce". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
- American Academy of Achievement.
- ^ "John Robinson Pierce". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
- ^ LAUREATES; 1985 (1st) Japan Prize Laureates; Prize Category: Information and Communications; Dr. John R. Pierce (United States)
- .
- ^ "You and Your Research". www.cs.virginia.edu. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
- ^ Kamin, Arthur Z. "State Becomes a Part of Celebrating Marconi's Achievements", The New York Times, October 23, 1994. Accessed July 6, 2008. "The recipient in 1979 was Dr. John R. Pierce, then of the California Institute of Technology who had been with AT&T Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill and at Holmdel. Dr. Pierce had lived in Berkeley Heights and now lives in Palo Alto, Calif."
- ^ Edward E. David, Jr.; Max V. Mathews; A. Michael Noll. "John Robinson Pierce". Biographical Memoirs. National Academies Press. Retrieved December 8, 2009.
- ^ Memorial Resolution: John Robinson Pierce (1910–2002) Archived July 2, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
Sources
External links
- IEEE Global History Network biography
- Creative Thinking by J. R. Pierce, December 1951
- "Machine Hearing and the Legacy of John R. Pierce" – video of a talk at Caltech's EE Centennial celebration
- John R. Pierce at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database