Wallace John Eckert (June 19, 1902 – August 24, 1971) was an American

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

, who directed the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

which evolved into the research division of IBM.

Life

Wallace John Eckert was born in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

on June 19, 1902. Shortly thereafter, his parents John and Anna Margaret (née Heil) Eckert moved to

Erie County, Pennsylvania Erie County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is the northernmost county in Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 270,876. Its county seat is Erie. The county was created in 1800 and later organized in 1803. ...

where they raised their four sons on a farm in Albion, PA. Wallace graduated from Albion High School in a class of six boys and eight girls. He graduated from

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

in 1925, and earned an MA from

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

in 1926. He started teaching at

in 1926, and earned his PhD from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

in 1931 in

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

under Professor

Ernest William Brown Ernest William Brown FRS (29 November 1866 – 22 July 1938) was an English mathematician and astronomer, who spent the majority of his career working in the United States and became a naturalised American citizen in 1923. His life's work was ...

(1866–1938). He married Dorothy Woodworth Applegate in 1932. They raised three children, Alice
John
and Penelope. He was not related to another computer pioneer of the time,

J. Presper Eckert John Adam Presper Eckert Jr. (April 9, 1919 – June 3, 1995) was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he designed the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first course in co ...

(1919–1995). He attended the launch of

Apollo 14 Apollo 14 (January 31, 1971February 9, 1971) was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to land on the Moon, and the first to land in the lunar highlands. It was the last of the " H missions", landings at s ...

just before his death August 24, 1971 in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. A lunar

crater Crater may refer to: Landforms *Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet *Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surfac ...

, located within Mare Crisium, is named in his honor.

Solution of differential equations for astronomy

Around 1933 Eckert proposed interconnecting punched card tabulating machines from IBM located in Columbia's Rutherford Laboratory to perform more than simple statistical calculations. Eckert arranged with IBM president

Thomas J. Watson Thomas John Watson Sr. (February 17, 1874 – June 19, 1956) was an American businessman who served as the chairman and CEO of IBM. He oversaw the company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956. Watson developed IBM's managemen ...

for a donation of newly developed IBM 601 calculating punch, which could multiply instead of just adding and subtracting. In 1937 the facility was named the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau. IBM support included customer service and hardware circuit modifications needed to tabulate numbers, create mathematical tables, add, subtract, multiply, reproduce, verify, create tables of differences, create tables of logarithms and perform Lagrangian interpolation, all to solve differential equations for astronomical applications. In January 1940, Eckert published ''Punched Card Methods in Scientific Computation'', which solved the problem of predicting the

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...

s of the

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...

s, using the IBM electric tabulating machines, based on the punched card. This slim book is only 136 pages, including the index.

Naval service

In 1940, Eckert became director of the

United States Naval Observatory United States Naval Observatory (USNO) is a scientific and military facility that produces geopositioning, navigation and timekeeping data for the United States Navy and the United States Department of Defense. Established in 1830 as the Depo ...

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

had been raging in Europe for many months. The US had not yet officially joined the effort to defeat Hitler. None-the-less, the demand for navigation tables had risen. This demand helped inspire Eckert to automate the process of creating these tables, using punched card equipment. The 1941 almanac was the first to be produced using automated equipment, down to the final

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...

. Martin Schwarzschild became directory of the Columbia laboratory while Eckert was at USNO.

Manhattan Project

Columbia

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 ...

professor Dana P. Mitchell served in the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

(developing the first

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

s) at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

. By 1943 the laborious simulation calculations used electromechanical

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...

s of that time operated by human "computers," mostly wives of the scientists. Mitchell suggested using IBM machines like his colleague Eckert.

Nicholas Metropolis Nicholas Constantine Metropolis (Greek: ; June 11, 1915 – October 17, 1999) was a Greek-American physicist. Metropolis received his BSc (1937) and PhD in physics (1941, with Robert Mulliken) at the University of Chicago. Shortly afterwards, ...

and Richard Feynman organized a punched-card solution, proving its effectiveness for physics research. John von Neumann and others were aware of this "computing by punched cards". That helped them conceive towards the all-electronic answers which evolved into what we call a computer today.

Watson laboratory

After the war Eckert moved back to Columbia. Watson had just had a falling out with

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 higher le ...

over a project IBM had funded. IBM would instead focus their funding on Columbia, and Eckert's laboratory was named Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory. Eckert understood the significance of his laboratory, keenly aware of the advantage of scientific calculations performed without human interventions for long stretches of computation. A massive machine built to Eckert's specifications was built and installed behind glass at IBM's headquarters on

Madison Avenue Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stre ...

in January 1948. Known as the

Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was an electromechanical computer built by IBM. Its design was started in late 1944 and it operated from January 1948 to August 1952. It had many of the features of a stored-program computer ...

, it was used as a calculating device with some success, but served even better as a recruiting tool. Eckert published a description of the SSEC in November 1948. As an employee of IBM, Eckert directed one of the first industrial research laboratories in the country. In 1945 he hired Herb Grosch and Llewellyn Thomas as the next two IBM research scientists, who both made significant contributions. When

Cuthbert Hurd Cuthbert Corwin Hurd (April 5, 1911 – May 22, 1996) was an American computer scientist and entrepreneur, who was instrumental in helping the International Business Machines Corporation develop its first general-purpose computers. Life Hurd ...

became the next PhD to be hired by IBM in 1949, he was offered a position with Eckert, but instead founded the Applied Science Department, and later directed the development of IBM's first commercial stored program computer (the

IBM 701 The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May ...

) based on the demand demonstrated by applications such as those of Eckert. In this period he continued his innovative contributions to computational astronomy by implementing Brown's

Lunar theory Lunar theory attempts to account for the motions of the Moon. There are many small variations (or perturbations) in the Moon's motion, and many attempts have been made to account for them. After centuries of being problematic, lunar motion can now ...

in his computer; developing the Improved Lunar Ephemeris; and performing the first numerical integration to compute an ephemeris for the outer planets. In 1957 the Watson lab moved to Yorktown Heights, New York (with a new building completed in 1961) where it is known as the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Eckert won the James Craig Watson Medal in 1966 from the US National Academy of Sciences.

Author

''Faster, Faster - A Simple Description of a Giant Electronic Calculator, and the Problems it Solves''. Written with

Rebecca Jones Rebecca Jones may refer to: *Rebecca Jones (Mexican actress) (1957–2023), Mexican actress *Rebecca Jones (archaeologist), Scottish archaeologist *Rebecca Jones (astronomer) (died 1966), American astronomer and discoverer of the Jones-Emberson 1 ...

, Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, Columbia University, International Business Machines. McGraw-Hill, 1955- An account for the layman. Says multiplying 1,000 pairs of ten digit numbers would take a week by hand, and could be done by an "electronic supercalculator" (of the day!) in one second.

References

External links

* Includes photographs, references, bibliography, and publication list.
Oral history interview with Martin Schwarzschild
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Schwarzschild was Eckert's immediate successor as director of the Watson Scientific Computation Laboratory at Columbia University.
Wallace J. Eckert Papers, 1931-1975
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Eckert, Wallace John 1902 births 1971 deaths American astronomers Columbia University faculty