John Robinson Pierce | |
|---|---|
 John Robinson Pierce | |
| Born | March 27, 1910 (1910-03-27) Des Moines, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | April 2, 2002(2002-04-02) (aged 92) Sunnyvale, California, U.S. |
| Awards | Stuart Ballantine Medal(1960) IEEE Edison Medal(1963) IEEE Medal of Honor(1975) Marconi Prize(1979) Japan Prize(1985) |
John Robinson Pierce (March 27, 1910 – April 2, 2002), was an American engineer and author. He did extensive work concerningradio communication,microwave technology,computer music,psychoacoustics, andscience fiction.[1] Additionally to his professional career he wrote science fiction for many years using the namesJohn Pierce,John R. Pierce, andJ. J. Coupling. Born inDes Moines, Iowa, he earned his PhD fromCaltech, and died inSunnyvale, California,[2] from complications of Parkinson's Disease.
Pierce wrote aboutelectronics andinformation theory, and developed jointly the concept ofpulse-code modulation (PCM) with hisBell Laboratories colleaguesBernard M. Oliver andClaude Shannon. He supervised the Bell Labs team which built the first transistor, and at the request of one of them,Walter Brattain, invented the termtransistor; he recalled:
The way I provided the name, was to think of what the device did. And at that time, it was supposed to be the dual of the vacuum tube. The vacuum tube had transconductance, so the transistor would have 'transresistance.' And the name should fit in with the names of other devices, such as varistor and thermistor. And ... I suggested the name 'transistor.'
— John R. Pierce, interviewed forPBS show "Transistorized!"
Pierce's early work atBell Labs concerned vacuum tubes of all sorts. DuringWorld War II he discovered the work ofRudolf Kompfner in a British radar laboratory, where Kompfner had invented thetraveling-wave tube;[3] Pierce worked out the mathematics for this broadband amplifier device, and wrote a book about it, after hiring Kompfner for Bell Labs.[4] He later recounted that "Rudy Kompfner invented the traveling-wave tube, but I discovered it." According to Kompfner's book, the statement "Rudi invented the traveling-wave tube, and John discovered it" was due to Dr. Eugene G. Fubini, quoted inThe New Yorker "Profile" on Pierce, September 21, 1963.
Pierce is widely credited for saying "Nature abhors a vacuum tube", but Pierce attributed that quip to Myron Glass.[5] Others[6] say that quip was "commonly heard at the Bell Laboratories prior to the invention of the transistor".
Other famous Pierce quips are "Funding artificial intelligence is real stupidity", "I thought of it the first time I saw it", and "After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy."
TheNational Inventors Hall of Fame has honoredBernard M. Oliver[7] andClaude Shannon[8] as the inventors of PCM,[9]as described in 'Communication System Employing Pulse Code Modulation,'U.S. patent 2,801,281 filed in 1946 and 1952, granted in 1956. Another patent by the same title was filed by John Pierce in 1945, and issued in 1948:U.S. patent 2,437,707. The three of them published "The Philosophy of PCM" in 1948.[10]
Pierce did significant research involvingsatellites, including an important role as executive director of Bell's Research – Communications Principles Division[11])for the development of the first commercialcommunications satellite,Telstar 1.[12]In fact, althoughArthur C. Clarke was the first to proposegeostationary communications satellites, Pierce seems to have thought of the idea independently and may have been the first to discussunmanned communications satellites. Clarke himself characterized Pierce as "one of the two fathers of the communications satellite" (along withHarold Rosen).[13] SeeECHO – America's First Communications Satellite (reprinted from SMEC Vintage Electrics Volume 2 #1) for some details on his original contributions.
Pierce directed the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee that produced theALPAC report, which had the effect of curtailing most funding for work onmachine translation during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
After quitting Bell Laboratories, he joinedCalifornia Institute of Technology as a professor of electrical engineering in 1971. Soon thereafter, he also accepted the position of Chief Engineer at theJet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 1980 he retired from Caltech and accepted his final job atStanford'sCCRMA. There he was prominent in the research ofcomputer music, as a Visiting Professor of Music, Emeritus (along withJohn Chowning andMax Mathews). It was at Stanford that he became an independent co-discoverer of the non-octave musical scale that he later named theBohlen–Pierce scale.
Many of Pierce's technical books were intended to introduce a semi-technical audience to modern technical topics. Among them areElectrons, Waves, and Messages (1956);Man's World of Sound (1958);Waves and the Ear: What We Hear and How (1960);An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals, and Noise (1961/1980);Quantum Electronics (1966); andSignals: The Science of Telecommunication (1990).[14]
Pierce was elected to the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1955.[15] In 1960, Pierce was awarded theStuart Ballantine Medal. In 1962, Pierce received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement.[16] That same year, he was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[17] In 1963, Pierce received theIEEEEdison Medal for "his pioneer work and leadership in satellite communications and for his stimulus and contributions to electron optics, travelling wave tube theory, and the control of noise in electron streams". He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1973.[18] In 1975, he received theIEEE Medal of Honor for "his pioneering concrete proposals and the realization of satellite communication experiments, and for contributions in theory and design of traveling wave tubes and in electron beam optics essential to this success." In 1985, he was one of the first two recipients of theJapan Prize "for outstanding achievement in the field of electronics and communications technologies".[19]
Besides his technical books, Pierce wrote science fiction using the pseudonymJ.J. Coupling, which refers to the totalangular momenta of individual particles.[20] John Pierce also had an early interest ingliding and assisted the development of the Long Beach Glider Club in Los Angeles, one of the earliest glider societies in the United States. According toRichard Hamming "you couldn't talk to John Pierce without being stimulated very quickly".[21]
Pierce had been a resident ofBerkeley Heights, New Jersey,Pasadena, California, and later ofPalo Alto, California.[22]
During his later years, as a visiting professor atStanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, he and his wife Brenda were known for having dinner parties in their Palo Alto home, in which they would invite an eclectic variety of guests and have lively discussions concerning topics ranging from space exploration to politics, health care, and20th-century music. One such dinner party was reported inThis Is Your Brain On Music, written by Pierce's former studentDaniel Levitin.
The papers of John R. Pierce are at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.[23]
At his death Pierce was survived by his wife Brenda; a son—science fiction editorJohn Jeremy Pierce—and a daughter, Elizabeth Anne Pierce.[24]
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