Earl Judson Isaac (7 August 1921 – 12 December 1983) founded Fair, Isaac and Company along with friend William R. "Bill" Fair in 1956. They began the operation in a small studio apartment on Lincoln Avenue in

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...

Early life and education

Earl Isaac was born in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. The youngest of five children, Earl had two older brothers and two older sisters. He graduated from high school at age 15, attended

Muskingum University Muskingum University is a private liberal arts college in New Concord, Ohio. Chartered in 1837 as Muskingum College, the institution is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Collectively, the university's alumni are referred to as th ...

, then accepted an appointment in the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...

at Annapolis, Maryland, for the class of 1944. Because of the outbreak World War II, he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1943, one year early, and served as a U.S. Naval officer on the USS ''Missouri''. After World War II, Earl earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics at

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

Career

After being discharged from the Navy, he worked at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

during SRI's beginning years, then known as Stanford Research Institute, along with Bill Fair, his future business partner. With an initial investment of $400 each, Isaac and Fair founded Fair, Isaac and Company in 1956, a firm that would provide a creditworthiness scoring system to lenders.About Us FICO
nbsp;— FICO official Web site

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * View Points Special Issue — The Fair Isaac Company, January 1986, written by William R. Fair. (article is not online)

External links

FICO - About Us - History
American computer programmers 1921 births 1983 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American businesspeople United States Navy officers United States Naval Academy alumni SRI International people Muskingum University alumni People from Buffalo, New York Businesspeople from Buffalo, New York United States Navy personnel of World War II {{US-mathematician-stub