Engineer and Pioneering Computer Scientist
1925–1985

Best remembered for his easy-to-understand textbooks about computers, programming, and operating systems, Elliot Organick was a pioneer computer scientist who was also passionate about making advances in technology simple and easy to understand. According to J. A. N. Lee in Computer Pioneers, one of Organick's most quoted remarks when hearing about new advances in technology was: "This is great stuff, but does it have to be so complicated?"

Organick was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 25, 1925. After high school in Manhattan, he began studies in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1941. He graduated in only three years, going on to work as a chemist for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government's secret effort to develop an atomic bomb during World War II. He returned to academics shortly afterward, however, earning a master's degree from the...