Bruce Howard McCormick (1928–2007) was an American computer scientist, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Computer Science, and founding director of the Brain Networks Lab at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

Biography

McCormick took his BS in

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1950, followed by two years on a Fulbright Scholarship to

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

, England. There he studied quantum field theory with Professor

Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Univer ...

, founder of the field of quantum mechanics and holder of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Professor

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...

. McCormick returned to the U.S. to take his PhD in physics at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1955, with the thesis "Two investigations in meson theory in the non-relativistic limit". He then became a Postdoctoral Fellow at

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

.Kathy Flores (2007)
"Dr. Bruce H. McCormick"
Texas A&M University. Retrieved 9 July 2008. In 1957 McCormick accepted a post as staff physicist at the Alvarez Hydrogen Bubble Chamber Group at the

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

. The Chamber Group was led by Dr. Luis Alvarez, who later won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1960 Dr. McCormick began 12 years at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

where he was a professor of physics, computer science, and bioengineering. Afterwards, he served as head of the electrical engineering and computer science department at the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...

. McCormick joined Texas A&M in 1983 as the first department head of the newly formed Department of Computer Science in the Dwight Look College of Engineering. In August 2005 Dr. McCormick retired from Texas A&M but continued his research there, exploring and understanding the complexity and scaling properties of the brain's microcircuit structure. McCormick died the first week of December 2007 in

Rio Rancho, New Mexico Rio Rancho ( es, Río Rancho) is the most populous and only city in Sandoval County, part of the expansive Albuquerque metropolitan area, in the U.S. state of New Mexico. A small portion of the city extends into northern Bernalillo County. It i ...

Publications

McCormick has authored numerous books and articles.Bruce H McCormick
ACM author profile page. ;Books: * 1966. ''Design concepts for an information resource center with option of an attached automated laboratory''. With A. M. Richardson. * 1968. ''Pattern articulation unit of Illiac III; homogenous Boolean functions in the iterative array.''William J. Watson and Richard T. Borovec. * 1968. ''Illiac III programming manual''. Edited with R. Lansford. * 1970. ''Illiac III computer system; brief description and annotated bibliography''. * 1971. ''Illiac III reference manual''. Edited with B.J. Nordmann and others. * 1971. ''Interval generalization of switching theory''. With R.S. Michalski. * 1972. ''Analysis of texture''. With S. N. Jayaramamurthy. * 1987. ''Visualization in Scientific Computing''. Edited with Thomas A. DeFanti and Maxine D. Brown. ACM Press. ;Articles, a selection: * 1987. "The Usable Intersection of PC Graphics and NTSC Video Recording". With D.J. Sandin. In: ''IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications''. Oct. 1987, pp. 50–58. * 1987. "Visualization in Scientific Computing". With T.A. DeFanti and M.D. Brown. In: ''Computer Graphics''. Vol. 21, No. 6, Nov. 1987. * 1988. "Scientific Animation Workstations". With M.D. Brown. in: ''SuperComputing''. Fall 1988, pp. 10–13. * 1989. "Scientific Animation Workstations: Creating an Environment for Remote Research, Education, and Communication". With M.D. Brown. In: ''Academic Computing;;. Feb. 1989, pp. 10–12, 55-57. * 1989. "Insight Through Images". With M.D. Brown. In: '' UNIX Review''. Mar. 1989, pp. 42–50. * 1989. "Visualization: Expanding Scientific and Engineering Research Opportunities". With Thomas A. DeFanti and Maxine D. Brown. In: ''Computer''. vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 12–25, Aug., 1989 * 1990. "Advanced visualization environments: knowledge-based image modeling". In: ''Visualization in supercomputing''. July 1990. Pp 135–150. * 1997. "Grid generation for brain visualization at the cellular and tissue level". With David A. Batte. In: ''CNS '96: Proceedings of the annual conference on Computational neuroscience : trends in research, 1997''. New York : Plenum Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McCormick, Bruce H. 1928 births 2007 deaths Harvard University alumni American computer scientists MIT Department of Physics alumni Texas A&M University faculty Information visualization experts Alumni of the University of Cambridge University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Place of birth missing Fulbright alumni