860 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ComputerPioneers. ByJ. A. N. Lee. Los Alamitos, Cal.: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995. Pp. xiii+816. $54.00 (hardcover). ComputerPioneers is a biographical encyclopedia covering the lives, careers, and publications of more than 240 people who influenced the development of the modern computer in some significant way. Most of the biographical sketches, printed alphabetically by name, include a schematic outline of the individual’s career, listing dates of birth and death, education, professional experience, and honors and awards. This is often, but not always, followed by a narrative (in length anywhere from one paragraph to a dozen pages) that dis cusses the pioneer’s work on computers and gives some flavor of his or her life and times. Each sketch closes with one or two short quotations and a brief bibliography of significant publications and other biographical sources. Most of the sketches are based on articles previously published in the Annals ofthe History of Computing or elsewhere. Some were origi nally memoirs written by the pioneers themselves; others were obitu aries. Many of the still-living pioneers edited or contributed to their own biographies. Lee’s selection criterion was “someone who introduced a new ele ment, concept, or direction to the field.” He has, in general, chosen very well. All of the most important names—Babbage, Turing, Mauchly, von Neumann, Forrester, Cray, Noyce, Wozniak—are here. But some pioneers have also been included whom a less thor ough editor might easily have forgotten, such as the 9th-century Per sian mathematician Al-Khowarizmi (after whom “algorithms” are named). In addition, a host of lesser-known contributors, such as Robert Hughes, a member of the FORTRAN development team, have found their way into the volume. Finally, Lee has also wisely included some—such as John Parker, who provided the financial backing for Engineering Research Associates, an early commercial computer firm—whose contributions were primarily supportive or facilitating: managers, CEOs, financiers, and educators. Lee pro vides substantial information about importantwomen computer pio neers such as Grace Hopper, Lady Lovelace, and Mina Rees. Some sketches attend carefully to important biographical issues, such as Turing’s homosexuality. Anyone selecting pioneers in this field is certain to draw fire for leaving somebody out. I might have included, for example, Paul Armer, head of RAND’s numerical analysis department from 195262 , and Terry Winograd, who developed the natural language under standing program SHRDLU. But this is only a quibble. A more seri ous problem is that the sketches vary enormously in both quality and length. In too many cases, the entry consists of only a single sen tence. In others, career information is provided, but no narrative, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 861 or vice versa. Many of the narratives are excellent, but others say little about the pioneer’s work and serve no real purpose beyond adding an element of human interest. (This may be the unfortunate result of allowing the pioneers themselves too strong a hand in com posing their own entries.) The quotations section of the entries seems to me, in general, a misguided attempt to add flavor to what is essentially a reference work, particularly since many of them are poorly chosen. Lee and his contributors do not seem to have thought through carefully enough the issues of why and how scholars (and others) will want to use this book. Most of the entries are two pages or less of fairly large type. Since this means that anyone seeking more than the most cursory information will have to look elsewhere—and since many of the shortest entries include no bibliographies to guide that search—using this book as a reference tool can be a frustrating expe rience. In this reviewer’s opinion, Lee would have done far better to provide a smaller number of more consistently developed entries. The book’s index is, unfortunately, its worst feature. Inexplicably, it fails almost entirely to cross-reference the biographies or to pro vide content-based information. Instead, it simply lists the entries by name, adding a few subheadings. People who don’t know exactly for whom they are searching will curse this index; it is worse than useless...
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Jan 1, 2001
Hideyuki Suzuki 
Open Access