Ralph J. Slutz was an American physicist and computer architect known for his work in the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) and as a co-inventor of the SEAC. He was also a pioneer of the comprehensive ocean-atmosphere datasets for the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) project.https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-C13-0b76380f51778ebe3d804f21e9fd3bd6/pdf/GOVPUB-C13-0b76380f51778ebe3d804f21e9fd3bd6.pdf

Biography

Ralph Jeffery Slutz was born on May 18, 1917, in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

. He received a Bachelor of Science in

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

in 1938 and a Master of Science in 1939 from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT). Later, Dr. Slutz received his PhD in theoretical physics from the

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1946. Dr. Slutz was associated with the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) following his PhD in 1946. In 1948, he joined the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sc ...

(now NIST), where he co-invented the SEAC computer with Samuel N. Alexander and worked as its chief architect until 1954. Dr. Slutz then served as the chief of the Radio Propagation Physics Division at the National Bureau of Standards in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city in Boulder County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the most ...

, until 1980. Samuel-alexander-and-ralph-slutz-seac-input-output-resized-descrip

After retiring from the National Bureau of Standards in 1980, he became a senior scientist at the

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the Uni ...

(CIRES) at the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

at Boulder, where he led the ICOADS project until 1989. In 1987, Dr. Slutz co-authored and published the first research paper of ICOADS, titled A Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set. This first released dataset comprised seventy million marine datasets collected between 1854 and 1986. Since then, the datasets of ICOADS have been extended to the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Dr. Slutz died on November 16, 2005, in Boulder, Colorado. In 2010, The Ralph J. Slutz Student Excellence Award was established in the Computer Science Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder in his honor.

Personal life

Ralph Jeffery Slutz married Margaret Mary Michell (1919–2011) in 1946.Margaret M. Slutz Obituary
/ref> Margaret and Ralph had 4 children, 15 grandchildren, and by 2025, 14 great grandchildren.

Representative publications

* Memories of the Bureau of Standards’ SEAC, in Book of A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, Academic Press, R. J. Slutz, 1980 * A Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set, in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, S. D. Woodruff, R. J. Slutz, R. L. Jenne, P. M. Steurer, 1987.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slutz, Ralph J. 1917 births 2005 deaths 20th-century American physicists American computer scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Princeton University alumni Institute for Advanced Study people University of Colorado Boulder faculty