Oral-History:National Science Foundation (NSF)

National Science Foundation (NSF) Oral History Project

In the early 1990s, The IEEE History Center conducted a series of oral history Interviews to document the history of National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for computing and computer science research. The oral histories listed below were done as part of this project, and thus document not only the individual's careers, but the influence of funding on those careers. In addition to the interviews done for this project, additional oral histories on the Global History Network include discussion of NSF funding.

• Woodrow Wilson Bledsoe - Worked on automated theorem proving and helped found the artificial intelligence firm Panoramic Research Inc.
• Arthur Burks - Worked on the design of ENIAC and later chaired and helped found the Department of Computer and Communication Sciences at University of Michigan.
• Wayne Cowell - Mathematician who worked on software packages for solving specific classes of equations.
• Martin Davis - Known for his work on Hilbert's Tenth Problem and for his model of Post-Turing machines.
• Robert M. Gray (1991) - Electrical Engineer who made significant contributions in speech processing, developed one of the first examples of a universal code and popularized the algorithm for vector quantifier design.
• David Gries - Has worked to advance the teaching of CS and is known for his research in compiling and in programming methodology.
• Juris Hartmanis - Made significant contributions in the field of computational complexity theory and was one of founders and the first chairman of the Cornell CS department.
• Martin Hellman - A researcher in cryptography whose work has been applied to public key encryption systems.
• Walter Karplus - Applied his work using computers to solve partial differential equations to many different areas. He has served as computer science department chair and interim dean at UCLA.
• David Kuck - Developed the Parafrase compiler system, led the construction of the CEDAR project and had made contributions to the design of parallel computing and memory.
• Barbara Liskov - A pioneer in object-oriented programming whose work on data abstraction led to the design and implementation of CLU.
• Saburo Muroga - Developed minimum-gate design and the Transduction Method for logic-design automation.
• Bertram Raphael - Known for his contributions to artificial intelligence, including inventing the A* Search Algorithm and contributing to the development of Shakey the Robot.
• Daniel Siewiorek - He has worked on the design of nine multiprocessor systems, including the Cm* Project, and contributed to the dependability design of over two dozen commercial computing systems.
• Theodore Van Duzer - Researched and published extensively on superconductor electronics and has also worked on Josephson devices and multigigahertz digital superconductor circuits.
• David Young Jr. - Known for his work in numerical analysis, he also established the Computation Center at University of Texas and was the founding director of the Center for Numerical Analysis.
• Lotfi Zadeh - Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, he is well known for his work on fuzzy sets.