Herman Goldstine

Herman Heine Goldstine (* September 13, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois, † June 16, 2004 in Bryn Mawr ) was American mathematician and computer scientist.

The son of German - Jewish immigrants studied at the University of Chicago mathematics with a bachelor 's degree in 1933, her Master's degree in 1934 and his doctorate in 1936 at Lawrence Murray Graves ( Conditions for minimum of a functional). He taught briefly at the University of Michigan and then went in World War II as an officer in the ballistics department of the U.S. Army, where he rose to lieutenant colonel. Here also his interest in electronic calculators began.

Goldstine became famous, among other things by the introduction of the flowchart for computer programs. From 1943 to 1946 he developed jointly with J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania the Electronical Numerical Integrator and Computer ( ENIAC), one of the first all-electronic computer systems in the world. The computing power of the system was 0.2 ms for addition and 2.8 ms for a simple multiplication.

After the war he worked with John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he was a permanent member in 1946 and assisted in von Neumann 's computer project. They developed there, the EDVAC (1952 ) already realized the Von Neumann architecture. After that he went to IBM where he was a manager and from 1958 headed the mathematical research. In 1965 he became director of research for data processing. From 1969 he worked as a research consultant at IBM and was IBM Fellow.

Goldstine worked mainly in the field of numerical mathematics and also wrote a history of this subject. The mathematical set of Goldstine is associated with his name.

From 1941 to 1964 he was married to Adele Katz, a former ENIAC programmer. In his second marriage he was married to Ellen Watson Goldstine. From his first marriage he had a son and a daughter.

Writings

  • A History of Numerical Analysis from the 16th through the 19th Century, Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Vol 2, Springer Verlag, 1977
  • The computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Princeton University Press 1980
  • Brief History of the Computer, in AMS History of Mathematics, vol.1, 1988 ( online)
Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania) Immigration Weak topology#The weak-.2A topology Name Authority File
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