1904-1995

American Computer Scientist and Biomedical Researcher

George R. Stibitz is internationally recognized as the father of the digital computer. While working as a research mathematician for Bell Telephone Laboratories during the 1930s, he designed a binary adding machine and later developed a series of increasingly sophisticated digital computers, several of which were used during World War II. In his later years, he turned his attention to the field of biomedicine, in which he was a pioneer.

Born on April 30, 1904, in York, Pennsylvania, Stibitz was one of several children of a minister in the German Reformed Church. He spent most of his youth in Dayton, Ohio, where his father taught ancient languages at Central Theological Seminary. Stibitz attended Moraine Park School, an experimental progressive school in Dayton, and earned a full scholarship to Denison University. He graduated from Denison in 1926 and in the following...