Goldstine, Herman Heine

(b. 13 September 1913 in Chicago, Illinois; d. 16 June 2004 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), mathematician and leader in the development of the first electronic digital computer.

Goldstine was the son of Isaac Oscar Goldstine, a lawyer, and Bessie (Lipsey) Goldstine. He graduated from Chicago’s Nicholas Senn High School before attending the University of Chicago. Goldstine obtained his BS (1933), MS (1934), and PhD (1936) from the university, all in mathematics. Goldstine’s postgraduate career in mathematics began at the University of Chicago, where he was a research associate and instructor from 1936 to 1939. During this time he worked with a professor named Gilbert A. Bliss, an expert on the mathematical theory of exterior ballistics, which calculates the path of projectiles in flight. It was also during this period that Goldstine had the chance to teach for the first time, an experience he valued for many reasons. In his book The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Goldstine explained, “I had the unique opportunity for a young man of the period to teach, and therefore to learn, a considerable spectrum of mathematical subjects, both pure and applied.”

Although Goldstine had been invited to join the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, he chose instead to accept a position at the University of Michigan in 1939, serving first as an instructor and later as an assistant professor of mathematics. Once again Goldstine found that he was strongly drawn to teaching. He noted that the economic realities of the Depression resulted in vigorous competition for the few positions in universities and that many talented young men were “forced to leave the academic world for careers in business.” Goldstine remained at Michigan until 1942, when his expertise in ballistics made him a desirable researcher for the armed forces. Goldstine married Adele Katz, a mathematician and computer programmer, in September 1941; the couple had two children.

Perhaps the most important event in Goldstine’s professional life was his induction into the United States Army’s Ordnance Department in July 1942. Goldstine, who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, was assigned to the Army Ballistics Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, where work was under way to improve the speed and accuracy of calculating firing tables for artillery. These calculations were performed by women laboratory assistants on mechanical calculating machines. The workers were supervised by Goldstine’s wife.

Goldstine soon joined a group of researchers at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania who were in the early phases of developing a computing device to speed up the army’s ballistics calculations. Goldstine was influential in persuading the army to fund the research; he became the army’s liaison to the Penn project and was a key researcher as well as organizer of the project. Goldstine was also instrumental in persuading John von Neumann, a Hungarian-born mathematician who had worked on the atomic bomb, to join the Penn group.

As a result of work at the Moore School by Goldstine and von Neumann, together with John W. Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, John Grist Brainerd, and a team of other scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technicians, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was unveiled in 1946. According to Goldstine, this first computer was one hundred feet long, ten feet high, and three feet deep. It included approximately seventeen thousand vacuum tubes, seventy thousand resistors, ten thousand capacitors, and six thousand switches. A second-generation computer, the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer, or EDVAC, soon followed and greatly improved on the capabilities of the ENIAC. These machines marked the beginning of the computer age, and Goldstine was at the center of their development.

At the end of the war the Penn working group broke up, in part because Eckert and Mauchly resented being overshadowed by von Neumann. Goldstine and von Neumann both accepted positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1945, Goldstine serving first as assistant director of the electronic computing project and later as acting project director. Goldstine coauthored a series of papers at the IAS in the late 1940s with von Neumann and Arthur Walter Burks, a mathematical logician, which provided the “blueprint” for modern computers. While at the institute, Goldstine worked with von Neumann and others to develop the first stored-program computer. Goldstine’s work also represented a fundamental contribution to computer programming. In 1952 Goldstine was named a permanent member of the IAS.

Goldstine moved from the academic setting of the IAS into the private sector when he became the manager of mathematical sciences for research at the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in 1958. Goldstine held various jobs at IBM, including the position of director of scientific development for data processing, until his retirement in 1973. He also served as liaison between IBM’s research centers and the academic community. Goldstine’s first wife died in 1964, and he married Ellen Watson on 8 January 1966.

In addition to his work as a mathematician and computer scientist, Goldstine was the author of several books on mathematics and the history of computers, including The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (1972), A History of Numerical Analysis from the Seventeenth Through the Nineteenth Century (1977), and A History of the Calculus of Variations from the Seventeenth Through the Nineteenth Century (1980).

Goldstine continued to be active in retirement, serving as the executive officer of the American Philosophical Society from 1984 to 1997. In 1997 the society honored him with the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences. Goldstine was a member of many other professional organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the National Academy of Sciences. He won numerous awards, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Pioneer Award in 1982 as well as the Harry Goode Award in 1979 for his contributions to science. Goldstine was presented with the National Medal of Science by President Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1983 and named to the Hall of Fame of the Army Ordnance Department in 1997. Goldstine died of Parkinson’s disease at the age of ninety at a retirement community in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Goldstine chronicled his own career in his book The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (1972). Several other works on the history of the computer discuss Goldstine’s contributions, including Karl Kempf, Electronic Computers Within the Ordnance Corps (1961). Obituaries are in the Washington Post (21 June 2004), the Boston Globe (23 June 2004), the New York Times (26 June 2004), and the Chicago Sun-Times (8 July 2004).

Todd Timmons