Born February 20, 1920

Shanghai, China

Died March 24, 1990

Boston, Massachusetts

Pioneer of computer-related innovations

An Wang. AP/Wide World Photos.

"Progress does not follow a straight line; the future is not a mere projection of trends in the present. Rather, it is revolutionary. It overturns the conventional wisdom of the present, which often conceals or ignores the clues to the future."

Avisionary inventor and industrialist, Dr. An Wang was a pioneer of the computer age. From devising magnetic-memory cores in the 1940s that greatly increased the amount of data that could be stored in a computer and making the data easier and faster to retrieve, to introducing desktop word processors in the 1970s, Wang was a leading contributor in the evolution of computers from room-sized to desktop systems. He founded Wang Laboratories in Boston, Massachusetts, which became the largest minority-owned business in the United States and made...