David Dibner, 1927-2005

Abstract

The history of technology lost a good friend and significant benefactor on 28 September 2005, when David Dibner succumbed to a sudden and unexpected heart attack. He was seventy-eight years old. An engineer and businessman, David had headed the Dibner Fund and the Burndy Library since 1989 and supported the Dibner Institute from its creation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 until his death. With his wife Frances, also a board member of the Dibner Fund, David promoted a wide range of philanthropic interests, nurtured his own fascination with the artifacts of modern technology, and added significantly to the rare books, manuscripts, incunabula, and objects collected in the Burndy Library, more than doubling the number of volumes in the collection. In many of these activities, David stewarded the legacy of his father, Bern Dibner. Born in 1897 in what is now Ukraine, Bern Dibner emigrated with his family to the United States, settled in New York City, and graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of New York in 1921 with a degree in electrical engineering. He founded the Burndy Engineering Company (later Burndy Corporation) in 1924 to manufacture electrical connectors. The success of the company, based in large measure on Bern's twentyfour patents, allowed him to launch his philanthropic enterprise and indulge a lifelong fascination with the history of science and technology. He founded the Dibner Fund in 1957 as a private family foundation to support the history of science and a wide range of other programs, ranging from preservation of the environment to humanitarian relief and the promotion of peace and tolerance. Bern Dibner took a sabbatical from his company to study Renaissance science in Zurich, published more than thirty books and articles in the history of science and technology, and acquired a personal