Emerson W. Pugh (born May 1, 1929) is an American research engineer and scientist, whose career at US corporation IBM spanned several decades and resulted in significant technological advances. He was a leader in magnetic and computer memory technologies and author of several books, including college-level physics textbooks and the history of IBM. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

. He was President of

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

in 1989.

Biography

Pugh was born in Pasadena, California. His family moved to

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsyl ...

, where he was raised. After public-school education, he received BS and

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

degrees at

Carnegie Tech Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

. Following his graduation, he taught at Carnegie Tech for one year. He then began working at IBM in 1957.

Career at IBM

Pugh began working at the IBM research facility in 1957. After several months he was named manager of the Metals Physics Group. The group's research led to the development of the thin magnetic film array used in the

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applic ...

. They also developed computer-memory techniques including

magnetic bubble memory Bubble memory is a type of non-volatile computer memory that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as ''bubbles'' or ''domains'', each storing one bit of data. The material is arranged to form a series of ...

, and began development of a word processor for the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

. Pugh produced four books on IBM history and development of its products. He retired from IBM in 1993.

Activity with IEEE

While still working at IBM, Pugh was active in the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

. His first presentation was in 1964, and in 1965 he became a senior member of IEEE. He was named editor of IEEE Transactions on Magnetics in 1968. He was president of the Magnetics Society (1973–74), then Division Director, Executive Vice President, and VP of Technical Activities. In 1989 he was elected President of IEEE. He was also active on the IEEE History Committee, and was one of the trustees of the History Center. He served as President of the IEEE Foundation (2000–04).Oral History: Emerson W. Pugh
Accessed August 5, 2016 While serving on the IEEE History Committee (2009), Pugh created the STARS program with the IEEE History Center.

Partial bibliography

* Principles of Electricity and Magnetism * Building IBM * IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems

References

1929 births Living people American computer scientists IBM employees Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Carnegie Mellon University alumni {{compu-scientist-stub