Jan Aleksander Rajchman ( London, 10 August 1911 – 1 April 1989) was a Polish

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and computer pioneer.

Biography

Jan Aleksander was son of

Ludwik Rajchman Ludwik Witold Rajchman (1 November 1881 – 13 July 1965) was a Polish physician and bacteriologist. He is regarded as the founder of UNICEF, and served as its first chairman from 1946 to 1950. Family He was born to Aleksander Rajchman, the fou ...

and Maria Bojańczyk. His father was a Polish bacteriologist and the founder of UNICEF. He was born in London, where his parents temporarily lived, and where his father held various positions at the Royal Institute of Public Health and King's College. He received the Diploma of Electrical Engineering from the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology are two institutes of higher education in Switzerland (part of the ETH Domain): * Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people ...

in Zurich in 1935, and became a Doctor of Science in 1938. Rajchman emigrated to

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1935. He joined RCA Laboratory directed by

Vladimir K. Zworykin Vladimir Kosma Zworykin; or with the patronymic as ''Kosmich''; or russian: Кузьмич, translit=Kuz'mich, label=none. Zworykin anglicized his name to ''Vladimir Kosma Zworykin'', replacing the patronymic with the name ''Kosma'' as a middle na ...

in January 1936. He was a prolific inventor with 107 US patents among others logic circuits for

arithmetic Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th ...

. He conceived the first read-only memory, which was widely used in early computers. He conceived and developed the selectively addressable storage tube, the ill-fated Selectron tube, and the core memory. He was a Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is also a member of Sigma Xi, the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM), the Physical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

and the Franklin Institute. He received the 1960 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award and the 1974 IEEE Edison Medal ''For a creative career in the development of electronic devices and for pioneering work in computer memory systems.''

US patents

* Magnetic System, 1957

Sources

IEEE History SiteSmithsonian Oral History, Interview with RajchmanMemorial TributeScientist of the Day - Jan Rajchman - Linda Hall Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rajchman 1911 births 1989 deaths American electrical engineers Polish emigrants to the United States American people of Polish-Jewish descent Fellow Members of the IEEE IEEE Edison Medal recipients Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Fellows of the American Physical Society 20th-century American engineers