Harry Huskey
- Birthdate
- 1916/01/19
- Birthplace
- Whittier, NC, USA
- Death date
- 2017/04/09
Biography
Harry Douglas Huskey was born in Whittier, NC, on 19 January 1916, and his family moved to Idaho two years later. He developed an interest for mathematics and electronics at an early age and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and pyhsics from the University of Idaho in 1937. Huskey earned his master’s and doctorate in mathematics at Ohio State, and married Velma Roeth, one of his students.
After being rejected for military service due to poor eyesight, Huskey taught mathematics to Navy students at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering on the ENIAC, which was his first exposure to computers. Huskey worked with Alan Turing at the British National Physical Laboratory and was chief of machine development at the Institute for Numerical Analysis.
In 1954 he designed the G-15, a computer sold to the Bendix Aviation Corporation. From 1954 to 1967, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he conducted research on computer languages. He joined the faculty of the computer and information science program at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1967 and directed its computer center, and eventually became professor emeritus in 1986. Huskey was a Life Fellow of the IEEE.
Huskey died on 9 April 2017.
