Emerson W. Pugh, 1989 IEEE president, died on 8 December on the age of 95.
The IEEE Fellow served as president of the IEEE Foundation from 2000 to 2004.
“Emerson Pugh was one of many very first IEEE volunteers I met once I joined the IEEE workers in 1997,” says Karen Galuchie, IEEE Foundation government director. “I will probably be ceaselessly grateful to Emerson for the teachings he taught me, the eagerness with which he shared his time and expertise with IEEE, and the position he performed in creating the IEEE Basis we all know in the present day.”
Pugh was an energetic member of the IEEE History Committee, serving as its chair in 1997. In 2009 he labored with the IEEE History Center to create the IEEE STARS (Important Technological Achievement Recognition Choices) program, a web based compendium of invited, peer-reviewed articles on the history of major developments in electrical and pc science and expertise. The articles have been integrated into the Engineering and Technology History Wiki.
“Emerson Pugh was probably the most influential volunteer throughout my greater than 27-year tenure (to this point),” says Michael Geselowitz, senior director of the IEEE Historical past Middle. “He was capable of mix his three passions—engineering, IEEE, and historical past—by becoming a member of the IEEE Historical past Committee.”
Pugh labored for 35 years at IBM, the place he developed numerous reminiscence applied sciences for early pc methods.
Progressive work at IBM
He acquired bachelor’s and doctoral levels in physics from Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) in 1951 and 1956. Following commencement, he joined the varsity as an assistant professor of physics. After a 12 months of instructing, he left to hitch IBM, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., as a researcher within the steel physics group. In 1958 he was promoted to supervisor of the group.
Pugh was a visiting scientist in 1961 and 1962 at IBM’s Zurich laboratory earlier than relocating to the corporate’s Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. There he led the event of a skinny magnetic movie reminiscence array used within the IBM System/360, a household of mainframe pc methods that debuted in 1964.
In 1965 he was named director of IBM’s operational reminiscence group. Later he served as director of technical planning for the corporate’s analysis division. He additionally was a advisor to IBM’s analysis director.
He took a go away of absence in 1974 to steer a research by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on motorized vehicle emissions and gas economic system. He returned to the corporate the next 12 months to analysis reminiscence applied sciences. He developed bubble reminiscence, a kind of nonvolatile pc reminiscence that makes use of a skinny movie of a magnetic materials to carry small magnetized areas often called bubbles or domains. Every area shops one bit of knowledge, the smallest unit of digital data.
Starting within the early Eighties, Pugh labored on IBM’s technical historical past challenge, authoring or coauthoring four books on the corporate and its technical developments.
He retired in 1993.
Many years of service
Pugh joined IEEE within the mid-Sixties and was an energetic volunteer.
He served as 1973 president of the IEEE Magnetics Society. He was the editor of IEEE Transactions on Magnetics in 1968.
He was Division IV director and vp of IEEE Technical Activities.
In 1989 he was elected IEEE president. Throughout his time period, he oversaw revisions to the IEEE Code of Ethics and the opening of the IEEE Operations Middle, in Piscataway, N.J.
The IEEE Historical past Middle in 2019 established the Pugh Young Scholar in Residence internship, named after him and his spouse, Elizabeth. College students finding out the historical past of expertise or engineering can turn into a analysis fellow on the middle and obtain a stipend of US $5,000.
Pugh was energetic in a number of different organizations. He served on the United Engineering board of trustees, for instance, and he was a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Amongst his recognitions have been a 1992 IEEE-USA literary award, the 1991 IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award, and a 1990 Carnegie Mellon Alumni Affiliation achievement award.
