Arthur Walter Burks (October 13, 1915 – May 14, 2008) was an American
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
who worked in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project that contributed to the design of the
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first Computer programming, programmable, Electronics, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was ...
, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Decades later, Burks and his wife
Alice Burks outlined their case for the subject matter of the ENIAC having been derived from
John Vincent Atanasoff
John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer. Atanasoff invented the first electronic digital computer in the 1930s at Iowa Stat ...
. Burks was also for several decades a faculty member at the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
in
Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...
.
Early life and education
Burks was born in
Duluth, Minnesota
Duluth ( ) is a Port, port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. The population ...
. He earned his B.A. in
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
and
physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
from
DePauw University
DePauw University ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Greencastle, Indiana, United States. It was founded in 1837 as Indiana Asbury College and changed its name to DePauw University in 1884. The college has a Methodist heritage and was ...
in
Greencastle, Indiana
Greencastle is a city in Greencastle Township, Putnam County, Indiana, United States, and the county seat of Putnam County. It is located near Interstate 70 approximately halfway between Terre Haute and Indianapolis in the west-central portion ...
, in 1936 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
from the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
in
Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...
in 1937 and 1941, respectively.
The Moore School
The summer after obtaining his Ph.D., Burks moved to
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
, and enrolled in the national defense electronics course offered by the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
's
Moore School of Electrical Engineering
The Moore School of Electrical Engineering was a school at the University of Pennsylvania. The school was integrated into the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The Moore School came into existence as a resul ...
; his laboratory teaching assistant was
J. Presper Eckert, a graduate student at the Moore School; a fellow student was
John Mauchly
John William Mauchly ( ; August 30, 1907 – January 8, 1980) was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the f ...
, the chairman of the physics department at
Ursinus College
Ursinus College is a private liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869 and occupies a campus. Ursinus College's forerunner was the Freeland Seminary founded in 1848. Its $127 million endowment supports about 1, ...
in nearby
Collegeville, Pennsylvania
Collegeville is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a suburb outside of Philadelphia on Perkiomen Creek. Collegeville was incorporated in 1896. It is the location of Ursinus College, which opened in 1869. The population was 5,089 ...
. Both Burks and Mauchly sought and obtained teaching positions at the Moore School the following fall, and roomed together throughout the academic year.
ENIAC
When Mauchly and Eckert's proposed concept for an electronic digital computer was funded by the
U.S. Army's
Ballistics Research Laboratory in June 1943, Burks was added to the design team. Among his principal contributions to the project was the design of the high-speed multiplier unit. (Also during this time, Burks met and married
Alice Rowe, a
human computer
The term "computer", in use from the early 17th century (the first known written reference dates from 1613), meant "one who computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before electronic calculators became available. Alan Turing ...
employed at the Moore School.)
In April 1945, with
John Grist Brainerd
John Grist Brainerd (August 7, 1904 – February 1, 1988) was an American electrical engineer who served as principal investigator on the project to build ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Later, he was dean of the Moo ...
, Burks was charged with writing the technical reports on the ENIAC for publication. Also during 1945 Burks assisted with the preliminary logical design of the
EDVAC
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers. It was built by Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with ORDVAC, it was a successor to the ENIAC. ...
in meetings attended by Mauchly, Eckert,
John von Neumann
John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...
, and others.
Burks also took a part-time position as a philosophy instructor at
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...
during 1945–1946.
Institute for Advanced Study
On March 8, 1946, Burks accepted an offer by von Neumann to join the
computer project at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...
in
Princeton, New Jersey
The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...
, and joined full-time the following summer. (Already on the project was another member of the ENIAC team,
Herman Goldstine. Together, Goldstine and Burks gave nine of the
Moore School Lectures ''Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers'' (popularly called the "Moore School Lectures") was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrica ...
in Summer 1946.) During his time at the IAS, Burks worked to expand von Neumann's
theory of automata
Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automaton, automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science with close connections to cognitive science and math ...
.
University of Michigan
After working on this project, Burks relocated to
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...
, in 1946 to join the faculty of the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
, first as an assistant professor of philosophy, and as a full professor by 1954. With
Irving Copi he sketched the necessary design for general purpose computing.
Burks helped found the university's computer science department, first as the Logic of Computers group in 1956, of which he was the director, then as a graduate program in 1957, and then as an undergraduate program within the new Department of Computer and Communication in 1967, which he chaired until 1971. He declined a position heading up a different university's computing center, citing his primary interest as the purely theoretical aspects of computing machines. He was awarded the
Louis E. Levi Medal in 1956.
Burks' doctoral students include
John Holland, who in 1959 was the first student to receive a Ph.D. in computer science from Michigan, and possibly the first in the world.
Burks served as president of the
Charles S. Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss, Peirce was "the m ...
Society in 1954–1955. He edited the final two volumes (VII–VIII), published 1958, of the ''
Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'' and, over the years,
wrote published articles on Peirce.
Restoration of parts of the ENIAC
In the 1960s he was presented with the opportunity to acquire four units of the original ENIAC, which had been rusting in a storage
Quonset hut
A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel with a semi-circular cross-section. The design was developed in the United States based on the Nissen hut introduced by the British during World War I. Hund ...
in
Aberdeen, Maryland. He ran the units through a car wash before restoring them and donating them to the University of Michigan. They are currently on display in the entryway of the Computer Science Building.
Patent dispute
In 1964 Burks was approached by attorney Sy Yuter and asked to join T. Kite Sharpless and Robert F. Shaw in litigation that would add their names as inventors to the
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first Computer programming, programmable, Electronics, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was ...
patent, which would allow them to profit from the sale of licenses to the premiere electronic digital computer apart from
Sperry Rand
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs ...
, the company that owned the Eckert-Mauchly interest in the patent and was at that time seeking royalties from other computer manufacturers. This endeavor was never successful; in the 1973 decision to ''
Honeywell v. Sperry Rand'', U.S. District Judge
Earl R. Larson ruled—even as he invalidated the patent—that only Mauchly and Eckert had invented the ENIAC, and that Burks, Sharpless, and Shaw could not be added as inventors.
BACH Group
In the 1970s Burks began meeting with
Bob Axelrod,
Michael Cohen, and
John Holland, researchers with interests in interdisciplinary approaches to studying
complex adaptive system
A complex adaptive system (CAS) is a system that is ''complex'' in that it is a dynamic network of interactions, but the behavior of the ensemble may not be predictable according to the behavior of the components. It is '' adaptive'' in that the ...
s. Known as the BACH group (an acronym of their surnames), it came to include, among others,
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
winner
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, Strange loop, strange ...
, evolutionary biologist
William Hamilton, microbiologist
Michael Savageau, mathematician
Carl Simon and computer scientists
Reiko Tanese,
Melanie Mitchell and
Rick Riolo. The BACH group continues to meet irregularly as part of the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS).
In the 1970s and 1980s Burks, working with his wife
Alice
Alice may refer to:
* Alice (name), most often a feminine given name, but also used as a surname
Literature
* Alice (''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''), a character in books by Lewis Carroll
* ''Alice'' series, children's and teen books by ...
, authored a number of articles on the ENIAC, and a book on the
Atanasoff–Berry Computer.
As professor emeritus
In 1990, Burks donated a portion of his papers to the university's Bentley Historical Library, where they are accessible to researchers.
Burks died May 14, 2008, in an
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...
, nursing home from
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems wit ...
.
Awards
*2023: Stibitz-Wilson Award from the
American Computer & Robotics Museum
The American Computer & Robotics Museum (ACRM), formerly known as the American Computer Museum, is a museum of the history of computing, communications, artificial intelligence and robotics that is located in Bozeman, Montana, United States.
Th ...
Works
* Burks, Arthur W.,
Goldstine, Herman H., and
von Neumann, John (1946), ''Preliminary discussion of the logical design of an electronic computing instrument'', 42 pages, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, June 1946, 2nd edition 1947
Eprint
* Burks, Arthur W. and Wright, Jesse Bowdle (1952), ''Theory of Logical Nets''. Amazon says: published by Burroughs Adding Machine Co.; Google Books says: published by University of Michigan Engineering Research Institute; 52 pages. ''Deep Blue'
Eprint
* Burks, Arthur W. and Copi, Irving M. (1954), ''The logical design of an idealized general-purpose computer'', Amazon says: published by Burroughs Corporation Research Center; Google Books says: published by University of Michigan Engineering Research Institute, 154 pages. ''Deep Blue'
Eprint
* Burks, Arthur W. (1956), ''The logic of fixed and growing automata'', Engineering Research Institute, University of Michigan, 34 pages.
* Burks, Arthur W. and Wang, Hao (1956), ''The logic of automata'', Amazon says: published by Air Research and Development Command; Google Books says: published by University of Michigan Engineering Research Institute; 60 pages. ''Deep Blue'
Eprint
*
Peirce, Charles Sanders and Burks, Arthur W., ed. (1958), the ''
Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'' Volumes 7 and 8, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, also Belknap Press (of Harvard University Press) edition, vols. 7-8 bound together, 798 pages
online via InteLex reprinted in 1998 Thoemmes Continuum.
* Burks, Arthur W. (1971), ''Essays on Cellular Automata'', University of Illinois Press, 375 pages.
* Burks, Arthur W. (1978),
Review of ''The New Elements of Mathematics'' by Charles S. Peirce, Carolyn Eisele, ed., in the ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'', vol. 84, no. 5, September 1978, Project Eucli
Eprint PDF 791KB
*
* Burks, Arthur W. and
Burks, Alice R. (1981), "The ENIAC: First General-Purpose Electronic Computer" in ''Annals of the History of Computing''
vol. 3, no. 4 October 1981, pp. 310–399.
* Burks, Arthur W. (1986), ''Robots and free minds'', College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan, 97 pages.
*
* Burks, Arthur W. (1996), "Peirce's evolutionary pragmatic idealism", ''Synthese'', Volume 106, Number 3, 323–372.
A number of articles by Arthur W. Burks are listed on page 599 in index of ''Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce'' by Nathan Houser, Don D. Roberts, James Van Evraof, Google Book Search Bet
page 599
See also
*
Mantissa
*
Reverse Polish notation
Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''follow'' their operands, in contrast to prefix or Polish notation ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
Oral history interview with Alice R. Burks and Arthur W. Burks Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
, University of Minnesota.
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burks, Arthur
1915 births
2008 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
Cellular automatists
DePauw University alumni
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni
University of Michigan faculty