Hermann Maria Hauser, KBE, FRS, FREng, FInstP, CPhys (born 1948) is an Austrian-born entrepreneur, venture capitalist and inventor who is primarily associated with the Cambridge technology community in England.

Education and early life

When Hauser was 16 he went to the United Kingdom to learn English at a language school in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

. After a master's degree in Physics from

Vienna University The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

, he returned to

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

to do a PhD in Physics at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

Career

Hauser is probably best known for his part in setting up

Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK, including the Acorn Electron and the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn's ...

with

Chris Curry Christopher Curry (born 28 January 1946 in Cambridge) is the co-founder of Acorn Computers, with Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper. He became a millionaire as a result of Acorn's success. In his early career days, he worked at Pye, Royal R ...

in 1978. When

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been par ...

took control of Acorn in 1985 he became vice-president for research at Olivetti, in charge of laboratories in the US and Europe. In 1986, Hauser co-founded the Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL) in Cambridge with Andy Hopper, who became the laboratory's director. Hauser's role in Acorn was portrayed by

Edward Baker-Duly Edward Baker-Duly is a British actor who lives in New York City, New York. Biography He was born in Stockholm, Sweden of British and Swedish parents and has lived in the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, and South Africa. His UK television work include ...

in the BBC drama '' Micro Men''. In 1988, Hauser left Olivetti to start the Active Book Company, investing £1 million of his own money. The company sought to develop a portable ARM-based microcomputer "the size of a paperback book", featuring a screen and stylus for interaction and employing a "book" metaphor known as Hyperpage. The company planned to launch its first product after Christmas 1990, featuring an approximately A5-sized reflective display, automatic recognition of printed, as opposed to cursive, characters, and employing a multipurpose chip called Hercules featuring a static, low-power ARM core. A licensing agreement had been signed with Acorn for access to that company's hardware and software technology, and the company was seeking application developers for the platform. Not wanting to repeat the mistakes made by Acorn, which had kept its technology to itself, he demonstrated the Active Book to as many large companies as he could.

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

acquired Active Book in July 1991 and incorporated it into their EO Personal Communicator, which was released in April 1993. Hauser became chief technical officer and chairman of EO Europe. Sales did not meet expectations, and AT&T's EO subsidiary folded on 29 July 1994. In 1990, Hauser was involved in spinning out Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) from Acorn. In 1993, Hauser set up Advanced Telecommunication Modules Ltd with Andy Hopper. The company was acquired by Conexant Systems on 1 March 2004. He founded NetChannel Ltd in June 1996 as a holding company to begin work on marketing the NetStation. NetChannel was sold to AOL in 1996. He claimed in the 1990s that the networking technology used for

AppleTalk AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the ...

was based on the (unpatented)

Cambridge Ring The term Cambridge Ring could refer to: * The Cambridge Ring (computer network) technology developed at the university of Cambridge, England * The Cambridge Five espionage ring. * The inner ring-road of Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a universi ...

. In 1997 he co-founded

Amadeus Capital Partners Amadeus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies, founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997. It is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and is approve ...

Ltd, a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...

company, and in 1998 he co-founded

Cambridge Network The Cambridge Network is a commercial business networking organisation for business people and academics working in technology fields in the Cambridge area of the UK. The businesses and organisations that make up its membership are typical of thos ...

with

David Cleevely David Douglas Cleevely, CBE, FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and ...

and Alec Broers. In 2000,

Plastic Logic Plastic Logic Germany develops and manufactures electrophoretic displays (EPD), based on organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) technology, in Dresden, Germany. Originally a spin-off company from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cam ...

was founded, with Hauser as chairman. On 14 June 2001, the Hauser-Raspe Foundation was registered as a charity by Hauser and Pamela Raspe, to advance education. In August 2004, Amadeus Capital Partners led the Series B venture capital financing of Solexa, and Hauser joined its board of directors. Solexa developed a next-generation

DNA sequencing DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. T ...

technology which became the market leader; the company was sold to Illumina, Inc of San Diego in January 2007 for over $US600 million. In 2009, Hauser was announced as the first customer of the Illumina Personal Genome Sequencing service. As of 2009, Hauser is the head of the East Anglia Stem Cell research network. Hauser is a

non-executive director A non-executive director (abbreviated to non-exec, NED or NXD), independent director or external director is a member of the board of directors of a corporation, such as a company, cooperative or non-government organization, but not a member of th ...

of Cambridge Display Technology, a non-executive director of

XMOS XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops audio products and multicore microcontrollers. Company history XMOS was founded in July 2005 by Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, David May, and Hitesh Mehta. It received seed funding ...

Ltd and a member of the board of Red-M (Communications) Ltd. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

and

Loughborough Loughborough ( ) is a market town in the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England, the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and Loughborough University. At the 2011 census the town's built-up area had a population of 59,932 , the second large ...

and from Anglia Ruskin University. He is a member of the advisory board on the Higher Education Innovation Fund, and of the UK's Council for Science and Technology. Hauser was commissioned by the

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills , type = Department , logo = Department for Business, Innovation and Skills logo.svg , logo_width = 200px , logo_caption = , picture = File:Лондан. 2014. Жнівень 26.JPG , seal = , se ...

to write a report on technology and innovation in the UK. Publication of the report in 2010 led to the establishment of Catapult centres with £200 million of government funding. He was co-founder of Arm Holdings, the Cambridge based microchip manufacturer that was bought in 2016 by Japan's SoftBank. Since 2015, he is actively supporting Austrian start-ups and technology companies. In particular, he has invested in 2017 in the MEMS-speaker start-up "USound" and in eyeson, a cloud based

Unified Communications Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice (including IP telephony), mobility features (including e ...

solution nominated by Gartner Inc. as ''Cool Vendor in Unified Communications, 2017''.

Awards and honours

Hauser was voted the UK's "Computer Personality of the Year" of 1984. In 2010, ''Eureka'', in its "100 most important scientists", placed Hauser at 51. He became patron of The Centre for Computing History in December 2011, 30 years after the launch of the BBC Micro. On 8 July 2002, Hauser was elected a Fellow of the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physic ...

(FInstP) and an International

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

(FREng). In May 2004 he presented the prestigious IEE

Pinkerton Lecture The Pinkerton lecture series is held by the Institution of Engineering and Technology in commemoration and honour of John Pinkerton, the pivotal engineer who was involved with designing the UK's first business computer in 1951. The first lecture was ...

. In 2005, Hauser received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. The award was presented at the annual European Electronics Industry Awards in London. Hauser was awarded an Honorary CBE for "innovative service to the UK enterprise sector" in 2001. In 1998, Hauser was elected into an honorary fellowship of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, and he was also elected into an honorary fellowship of

with effect from 1 January 2000. In the same year he was awarded the

Mountbatten Medal The IET Mountbatten Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding contribution, or contributions over a period, to the promotion of electronics or information technology and their application. The Medal was established by the National Electronics C ...

. Hauser was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

(FRS) in 2012. His nomination reads: Hauser was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the

British Computer Society Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in inf ...

(DFBCS) in 2013 recognising his contribution to computing science in the UK.

References

External links

Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 3 September 2008 (video)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hauser, Hermann Living people Acorn Computers Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Fellows of King's College, Cambridge Fellows of Hughes Hall, Cambridge People from Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Institute of Physics Austrian emigrants to England Businesspeople from Vienna 1948 births British venture capitalists Fellows of the British Computer Society