was a Japanese engineer who became the president of

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

.. Iwama was born in

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most po ...

and studied

geophysics Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' so ...

. He worked in a

seismology Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

laboratory at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

until 1946, when

Akio Morita was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony along with Masaru Ibuka. Early life Akio Morita was born in Nagoya. Morita's family was involved in sake, miso and soy sauce production in the village of Kosugaya (currently a part of Tokoname ...

hired him to work at a predecessor of Sony. By 1950, he was a director of the company. At Sony, he helped introduce the first Japanese

transistor radio A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver that uses transistor-based circuitry. Following the invention of the transistor in 1947—which revolutionized the field of consumer electronics by introducing small but powerful, convenient ...

in 1954, and the first transistor television set in 1960. He headed the

Sony Corporation of America Sony Corporation of America (SONAM, also known as SCA), is the American arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation SONAM, headquartered in New York City, manages the company's US-based businesses. Sony's principal U.S. business ...

from 1971 to 1973, and became president of Sony from 1976 until his death of colon cancer on August 25, 1982.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iwama, Kazuo 1919 births 1982 deaths 20th-century Japanese businesspeople Sony people University of Tokyo alumni