An Wang, a computer scientist and commercial computing executive, is best remembered for founding Wang Laboratories, a prominent manufacturer of office wordprocessing and dataprocessing computers in the 1970s and 1980s. His early work as a computer scientist focused on the development of magnetic core memories for computers in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Wang, whose name means "Peaceful King" in Chinese, was born in Shanghai, China, on February 7, 1920. Because of its strategic location at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai was often a war zone during Wang's youth. Other areas of China were also at war: Japan captured the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. Wang's father, Yin Lu Wang, taught English in a private school and practiced traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Wang's mother was Zen Wan Chien. In elementary school, Wang excelled in math and science, but his grades in other subjects were so bad that...