Jacob Goldman

Biography

Born: July 18, 1921

Died: December 20th, 2011

Jacob Goldman was the founder of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center which made many important advancements to the field of computing.

Born in Brooklyn in 1921, Goldman received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania and began working at Westinghouse in 1945. He joined Ford in 1955 and after his retirement from Ford sat on the boards of Xerox, General Instrument, and the Burndy Corporation.

The Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, was established in 1970 where they designed the Alto personal computer, Ethernet networking, laser printing, and a graphical user interface operating system. Though Xerox did not profit from their technologies to the degree that Microsoft and Apple, two later companies who mass-marketed many principles which were developed at PARC, Goldman's management of the PARC revitalized research in the Xerox laboratories in the 1970s, and made an enormous impact on the computing world.

Goldman died on December 20th, 2011 of congestive heart failure.