George W. Patterson

Biography

George W. Patterson (IRE J, 1931; Associate, 1949; Senior Member, 1954; and Fellow, 1959) was born in Rochester, New York, on 6 May 1912. He received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Vermont in Burlington, in 1934; the M.A. degree in physics from Columbia University in New York City, in 1936; and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in 1958.

After teaching in public schools (1935-1937), Patterson joined the staff of the National Bureau of Standards, initially on the staff of WWV, 1938 to 1939, and later on the Bat-Pelican project, 1953 to 1956. He received the Naval Ordinance Development Award for distinguished civilian service from the U.S. Navy for his contributions to this pioneer guided missile development.

In 1946, Patterson joined the staff of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania, where he designed the logic for EDVAC arithmetic circuits and coordinated the logic design for the entire machine. From 1950 to 1955, Patterson was with the Research Center of the Burroughs Corporation, Paoli, Pennsylvania. Then he rejoined the faculty of the Moore School. In 1962, he was Associate Professor and Section Head for the systems logic research at the Moore School.

In addition to teaching and directing research on switching theory, Patterson was active in computer standardization, as a member of the Electronic Computers Committee beginning in 1949, and serving as Vice Chairman in 1962. He was also a member of the ACM committee that wrote the first programming glossary, and a member of the ASA Y32-14 task group that developed standards for computer logic systems. In 1962, he was a member of ASA sectional committee X3 on data-processing systems. In addition, he was a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of the American Mathematical Society, the Franklin Institute, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi.