Erich Bloch (January 9, 1925 – November 25, 2016) was a German-born American electrical engineer and administrator. He was involved with developing IBM's first transistorized supercomputer, 7030 Stretch, and mainframe computer, System/360. He served as director of the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

from 1984 to 1990.

Biography

Bloch was born in

Sulzburg Sulzburg is a town in the district Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the western slope of the Black Forest, 20 km southwest of Freiburg. Sulzburg had a long tradition of continuous Jewish settlemen ...

, Germany in 1925. Bloch was the son of Josef Bloch a Jewish businessman and Lina Rothschild a housewife, who were both later murdered in

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. He survived the war in a refugee camp in Switzerland and emigrated in 1948 to the United States. He studied electrical engineering at ETH Zurich and received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

in electrical engineering from the

University of Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 18 ...

. Bloch joined IBM after graduating in 1952. He was engineering manager of IBM's STRETCH supercomputer system and director of several research sites during his career. In June 1984, Ronald Reagan nominated Bloch to succeed

Edward Alan Knapp Edward Alan Knapp (March 7, 1932 – August 17, 2009) was an American physicist and was director of the National Science Foundation from 1982 to 1984. Knapp graduated with BA from Pomona College in 1954, and with a PhD in physics from the Univ ...

become director of the

. The same year, he was elected a foreign member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences or ''Kungliga Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien'' (IVA), founded on 24 October 1919 by King Gustaf V, is one of the royal academies in Sweden. The academy is an independent organisation, which prom ...

. In 1985, Bloch was awarded one of the first National Medals of Technology and Innovation along with Bob O. Evans and

Fred Brooks Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the O ...

for their work on the IBM System/360. After stepping down as director of the National Science Foundation, Bloch joined the

Council on Competitiveness The Council on Competitiveness is an American non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. The Council’s goal is to increase the United States' economic competitiveness in the global marketplace. The Council also works to bring high-value ...

as its first distinguished fellow. The

IEEE Computer Society 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 ...

awarded him the

Computer Pioneer Award The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. ...

in 1993 for high speed computing. In 2002, the

National Science Board The National Science Board (NSB) of the United States establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation (NSF) within the framework of applicable national policies set forth by the President and the Congress. The NSB also serves as an ind ...

honored Bloch with the

Vannevar Bush Award The National Science Board established the Vannevar Bush Award ( ) in 1980 to honor Vannevar Bush's unique contributions to public service. The annual award recognizes an individual who, through public service activities in science and technolog ...

.Noxon, Bill (April 24, 2002)
Erich Bloch Honored with Vannevar Bush Award for Long-Running Contributions to S&T.
Retrieved April 8, 2007. He was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2004 "for engineering management of the IBM Stretch supercomputer, and of the

Solid Logic Technology Solid Logic Technology (SLT) was IBM's method for hybrid packaging of electronic circuitry introduced in 1964 with the IBM System/360 series of computers and related machines. IBM chose to design custom hybrid circuits using discrete, flip chi ...

used in the IBM System/360, which revolutionized the computer industry." Bloch died at the age of 91 from complications of Alzheimer's disease on 25 November 2016 in Washington, D.C.

Awards

* National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1985) *

(1993) *

(2002) * Computer History Museum Fellow (2004)

References

External links

Erich Bloch profile
via Washington Advisory Group

via

IEEE 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 operat ...

Erich Bloch profile
via IBM {{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Erich 1925 births 2016 deaths People from Sulzburg People from the Republic of Baden 20th-century German Jews American electrical engineers IBM Research computer scientists Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences National Medal of Technology recipients University at Buffalo alumni George H. W. Bush administration personnel Reagan administration personnel German emigrants to the United States