Jean Bartik, American computer programmer (ENIAC), died she was , 86

Jean Bartik was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer died she was , 86.

(December 27, 1924 – March 23, 2011)
 

She was born Betty Jean Jennings^[2] in Gentry County, Missouri, in 1924 and attended Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, majoring in mathematics. In 1945, she was hired by the University of Pennsylvania to work for Army Ordnance at Aberdeen Proving Ground. When the ENIAC computer was developed for the purpose of calculating ballistics trajectories, she was selected to be one of its first programmers. Bartik later became part of a group charged with converting the ENIAC into a stored program computer; in the original implementation, ENIAC was programmed by setting dials and changing cable connections. She went on to work on the BINAC and UNIVAC I computers.^[1]

Bartik became an editor for Auerbach Publishers, an early publisher of information on high technology. She left Auerbach to join Data Decisions, a competitor to Datapro Research (now part of the Gartner Group) and Auerbach. Data Decisions was founded in 1980 by Elizabeth McKeown Sussman (formerly of Datapro) and Sandra Eisenberg, also of Datapro. Data Decisions was funded by Ziff-Davis Publishing in 1980. Jean joined Data Decisions in 1981 where she was a Senior Editor for the Communications Services research publication. Data Decisions was acquired by McGraw-Hill (then owners of Datapro) in 1985 and promptly shut down. With the demise of Data Decisions Jean left the IT industry, becoming a real estate agent.^[1].

Bartik was a friend of over 60 years with John Mauchly's widow, Kathleen "Kay" Antonelli. Mauchly was co-inventor of the ENIAC. He walked Jean down the aisle when she married and it was at Jean's wedding reception that he had the courage to approach Kay about dating. Kay was also one of the six original women programmers of the ENIAC. Bartik has a museum in her name at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The museum boasts rare one-of-a-kind ENIAC, BINAC and UNIVAC exhibits, including an original salesman pot-metal model of the UNIVAC I.^[3]

In addition to a BS in mathematics from Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, Bartik held an MS in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an honorary Dr. of Science from Northwest Missouri State University. In 1997 she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, along with the other original ENIAC programmers. In 2008 she was one of three Fellow Award honorees of the Computer History Museum, along with Bob Metcalfe and Linus Torvalds.

 

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Živorad Kovačević, Serbian diplomat died he was , 80.

Živorad Kovačević  was a Yugoslav (Serbian) diplomat, politician, NGO activist, academic and writer died he was , 80..

( 30 May 1930 - 23 March 2011)

Early life and education

Živorad Kovačević was born in Jagodina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia), of father Ilija, who spent WWII as a prisoner in Mauthausen, and mother Darinka. His older brother, Radovan, was killed by Germans in Jagodina in 1941; he is survived by an older sister, Stojanka. Živorad Kovačević was educated at an all-male Gymnasium called "Šesta Muška" in Belgrade, and then the Journalist Diplomatic Academy (Viša Novinarsko-Diplomatska Škola) graduating in 1952. He received his M.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961, and specialized in international relations at Harvard University in 1963.

Political career

Kovačević worked as the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Komuna (1954-1962), Director of Public Administration Institute (1962–1964), Vice-Secretary of the Executive Council of Serbia (1964–1967), and Secretary General of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (1967–1973).

He served as Deputy Mayor and then Mayor of Belgrade for eight years, from 1974 to 1982. During his tenure, Sava Centar was built in time to host the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, as well as the Hotel InterContinental for the meeting of the IMF and the World Bank. Many other projects were carried out during this period, most notably, Ada Ciganlija and Klinički Centar Srbije (Serbian Clinical Center). Kovačević was quoted as being proud of the fact that each year during his term between 10,000 and 12,000 apartments were built in the capital.^[1] On a more symbolic level, as a mayor, he set up a monument to Karađorđe (the leader of the first Serbian uprising against the Turks) on the great lawn in front of the National Library of Serbia.

From 1982 to 1986, Kovačević was a Minister in the government of Milka Planinc, a Prime Minister of Yugoslavia who tried to undertake economic reform after years of stagnation. Working in the federal government, he was a member of the Federal Executive Council, as well as the President of the Foreign Affairs Commission, paving the way to a career that was more international in perspective.

Kovačević was appointed Ambassador of Yugoslavia to the United States in 1987, but was recalled in 1989^[2] after his disapproval of Slobodan Milosević's policy, which he openly criticized in Washington. He was noted as one of a few citizens of Belgrade who met six American presidents, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan, and George Bush, and five Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George P. Shultz, James Baker, and Lawrence Eagleburger.His personal contribution, while ambassador in the USA, in sending Nikola Tesla's assets from the United States to Belgrade is widely acknowledged.

NGO activities

After his recall from the post of the Ambassador to the United States in 1989, Kovačević retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and spent the rest of his life as a prominent NGO activist and promoter of Serbia's integration in the European Union. He was the President of the Forum on International Relations, and in 1994, he joined the European Movement in Serbia, whose president he was to become in 1999. He held that position for the rest of his life.

Based on his personal account, Kovačević was offered the post of Foreign Minister in the Government of Milan Panić in 1992, but was prevented by Borisav Jović from taking it.

Kovačević was one of the founders of the Igman Initiative, which rallies 140 organizations in the so-called 'Dayton Triangle' (Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina). The Igman Initiative launched a "mini-Schengen" project, to bring about better relations on the territory of Former Yugoslavia similar to those that exist in the European Union, primarily in terms of a visa-free regime. The organization was founded following Kovačević's endeavors in April 1995, when, with a group of 38 anti-war intellectuals and activists from FR Yugoslavia, Kovačević crossed Mount Igman to join and support the citizens of Sarajevo during the siege.

Kovačević was the first President of the Foreign Relations Council of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, established in 2007.

Academic activities

In parallel with his work in helping build democratic relations in Serbia and elsewhere, Kovačević was a prolific writer. Following his long-term passion for languages and the written word, he published the first dictionary of idioms (both English-Serbian and Serbian-English). To these, he added one of his most popular works, "Lažni prijatelji u engleskom jeziku: zamke doslovnog prevođenja" (False Friends in the English Language: Traps of Literal Translation), as well as a number of titles on international relations and negotiation. He taught international negotiations at the Diplomatic Academy and the Department of Political Sciences in Belgrade and Podgorica, often lecturing about U.S. foreign policy and the break-up of Yugoslavia. He delivered his last lecture a week before his death.

Awards

In 2000, Kovačević was awarded The Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award that "honors an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley who is a native, citizen, and resident of a nation other than the United States of America, and who has a distinguished record of service to his or her country.^[3]

Published books

• Srpsko-engleski rečnik idioma, izraza i izreka. 1991. ISBN 86-7363-118-1.
• Englesko-srpski frazeološki rečnik. 1997. ISBN 86-7363-201-3.
• SAD i jugoslovenska kriza. 2000. ISBN 86-82297-39-6.
• Srpsko-engleski frazeološki rečnik. 2002. ISBN 86-7363-322-2.
• Englesko-srpski frazeološki rečnik (drugo izmenjeno i dopunjeno izdanje). 2002. ISBN 86-7363-338-9.
• Između arogancije i poniznosti: Srbija i svet. 2004. ISBN 86-7208-092-0.
• Međunarodno pregovaranje. 2004. ISBN 86-7363-391-5.
• Amerika i raspad Jugoslavije. 2007. ISBN 978-86-7363-536-1.
• Lažni prijatelji u engleskom jeziku: zamke doslovnog prevođenja. 2009. ISBN 978-86-6081-001-6.

Personal life

Živorad and Margita Kovačević walking with students in Belgrade in 1997. The sign behind them says "Walk with us."

Živorad Kovačević spent more than half a century married to Margita Kovačević, who died only three months before him. They shared a life as well as beliefs; she was with him every step of the way, among other things, taking part in demonstrations to protest the local election fraud during the reign of Slobodan Miošević. “Rain or shine we went there every day for 88 days,” Kovačević said.^[4]

 

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Sir Frank Lampl, British businessman died he was , 84.

Sir Frank William Lampl was Life President of Bovis Lend Lease, the leading global construction management company that he created from the British building firm Bovis during a 15-year period as Chairman and CEO died he was , 84..

(6 April 1926 – 23 March 2011)

Career

The son of a prominent Czechoslavakian lawyer, he spent his teenage years as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Dachau Nazi concentration camps, and his first construction job was as a slave labourer on an underground BMW factory outside Munich.

After World War II, Frank Lampl resumed his studies in Brno and inherited property from his murdered family. But after the communist takeover he was denounced as a bourgeois undesirable and sentenced to imprisonment in the uranium mines of Jachymov.

He married Blanka Kratochvilova, and they had one son.

Frank Lampl benefited from a general amnesty on Stalin’s birthday and was released in 1953 on condition that he take up work in either mining or construction. Having tired of mining he returned to construction. By 1963 he was managing director of the Pozemni Stavby Zavod Opava state construction company and won a place at Brno University.

Unwilling to be caught by a third oppressive regime when the Russian tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 Frank Lampl and his wife left with one suitcase to visit their son Thomas who was studying at Oxford University in England.

They never returned and at the age of 42 Sir Frank began his career in construction again. He joined the British building firm Bovis in 1971^[4] and by 1975 led Bovis’s first foray overseas enjoying particular success in the then booming Middle East.

In 1978 Sir Frank became chief executive of Bovis International and further contract successes followed, an achievement crowned by the Queen’s Award for Exports in 1984 and 1986. Bovis had been a division of the diversified transport and shipping company P&O since 1974, and in 1985 Frank Lampl joined the P&O main board in his capacity as Chairman of Bovis Construction.^[4]

Bovis became a name synonymous with the Big Bang building boom of London in the 1980s and the company’s introduction of US construction management skills facilitated rapid completion of the most complicated projects. The biggest was Canary Wharf with the tallest building in Europe.

At the same time Sir Frank realised that Bovis needed to diversify internationally if the company was to survive after the boom was over. By 1990 Bovis had completed three substantial acquisitions in the US and in 1991 was able to win the Atlanta Olympic Games construction management contract.

There was also a highly successful series of acquisitions on the continent of Europe bringing major projects and Bovis also won EuroDisney outside Paris, finished in 1992,^[5] and a huge shopping centre under Red Square in Moscow.

Additionally Sir Frank set up an operation in his former home town Brno and Bovis participated in several major Czech developments. And the Asian expansion of Bovis resulted in some notable wins, particularly the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, then the tallest building in the world.

In 1999 Sir Frank oversaw the successful sale of Bovis to the Australian retail real estate group Lend Lease and then announced his retirement at the start of the new Millennium. However, he remained Life President of Bovis Lend Lease and travelled extensively to see Bovis projects around the world.

Sir Frank was well known in Israel and lived with his 2nd wife artist Wendy, dividing his time between his home in Wiltshire, London's striking new Chelsea Bridge Wharf development and Washington. He was knighted in the 1990 New Year’s Honours and was an ex-chancellor of Kingston University as well as a holder of numerous honorary degrees.

 

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Richard Leacock , British documentary film maker (Louisiana Story, Primary, Monterey Pop, Janis) died he was , 89.

Richard Leacock  was a documentary film director and one of the pioneers of Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité  died he was , 89..

(18 July 1921 – 23 March 2011)

Early life and career

Leacock was born in London on 18 July 1921. Leacock grew up on his father's banana plantation in the Canary Islands until being sent to boarding schools in England at the age of eight.

He took up photography with a glass plate camera, built a darkroom and developed his pictures, but was not satisfied. At age 11 he was shown a silent film Turk-Sib about the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway. He was stunned, and said to himself "All I need is a cine-camera and I can make a film that shows you what it is like to be there".

At the age of 14 he wrote, directed, filmed and edited Canary Bananas (10 min. 16mm, silent), a film about growing bananas, but it did not, in his opinion, give you "the feeling of being there".

He was educated at Dartington Hall School from 1934-38, alongside Robert Flaherty's daughters, and where David Lack (Life of the Robin) taught biology.

Having filmed in the Canary Islands and then in the Galapagos Islands (1938-9) for ornithologist David Lack's expedition, he moved to the USA and majored in Physics at Harvard in order to master the technology of filmmaking. Meanwhile he worked as cameraman and assistant editor on other peoples films, notably To Hear Your Banjo Play (1941), filming a folk music festival atop a mountain in south Virginia where there was no electricity, with a 35mm studio camera and 35mm optical film sound recorder using batteries in a large truck, a rare achievement at that time. Three years as a combat photographer in Burma and China were followed by 14 months as cameraman on Robert Flaherty's Louisiana Story.^[2]

In the meantime, Leacock had married Eleanor "Happy" Burke in 1941. Daughter of the world-famous literary critic, philosopher, and writer Kenneth Burke, she had studied at Radcliffe College, but graduated from Barnard in New York City. The Leacocks had four children together. After ethnographic fieldwork with the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) of Labrador, Eleanor Leacock (1922-1987) earned her doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University (1952). Ten years later, after her marriage broke up, she went on to become a pioneering feminist anthropologist.^[3]

Documentaries

Many relatively conventional jobs followed, until 1954. He was then asked to make a reportage on a traveling tent theater in Missouri: the first film that he wrote, directed, photographed and edited himself, since Canary Bananas.

This film, Toby and the Tall Corn, went on the American cultural TV program, Omnibus, in prime time and brought him into contact with Robert Drew, an editor at LIFE magazine in search for a less verbal approach to television reportage. Another new contact, Roger Tilton wanted to film an evening of people dancing to Dixieland music spontaneously. Leacock filmed Jazz Dance for him, using hand held camera techniques.

Leacock's search for high quality, mobile, synchronous equipment to facilitate observation was ongoing. By 1960 this had been achieved, and resulted in Robert Drew's film Primary, an intimate observation of a primary election with Democratic hopefuls John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in Wisconsin.^[2]

A number of films followed made by Drew, Pennebaker, Maysles and their associates, but the US networks were not impressed. In France at the Cinémathèque Française, when Drew and Leacock screened Primary and On the Pole, Henri Langlois introduced the films as "perhaps the most important documentaries since the brothers Lumiere". After the screening, a monk in robes came up to them and said, "You have invented a new form. Now you must invent a new grammar!"

When Drew went to work for ABC-TV, Leacock Pennebaker was formed and produced Happy Mother's Day, Don't Look Back, Monterey Pop, A Stravinsky Portrait and many others ending with the remnants of Jean-Luc Godard's One A.M. - One P.M. (1972).

In 1968 he was invited to join Ed Pincus creating a new, small film school at MIT. Since 16mm filming was becoming so expensive, his group developed super-8 film synch equipment with modified mass-produced cameras that were much cheaper. Many filmmakers emerged from this program, including Ross McElway (Sherman's March), among others.

In 1989 he retired and moved to Paris, where he met Valerie Lalonde and, together, they made Les Oeufs a la Coque de Richard Leacock (84 minutes), the first major film shot with a tiny Video-8 Handycam to be broadcast on prime-time television in France. Leacock and Lalonde continued making films of their own choice without the pressures of TV producers.

Leacock died on 23 March 2011 at age the age of 89 in Paris. Before his death, he was raising funds for his multi-format memoir, “Richard Leacock: The Feeling of Being There,” a bound paper book and digital video book set to be published by Semeïon Editions.^[4]

Selected filmography

• 1935 Canary Bananas (8 min.)
• 1941 To Hear Your Banjo Play (20m, dir. Charles Korvin (Geza Karpathy))
• 1946 Louisiana Story (cameraman)
• 1948 Mount Vernon and The New Frontier (cameraman)
• 1949 Earthquake in Ecuador (director cameraman)
• 1950 Head of the House (writer-director-editor)
• 1952 The Lonely Night (dir. Irving Jacoby, filmed by Leacock)
• 1954 Jazz Dance (20min., cameraman)
• 1954 Toby and the Tall Corn (30 min., writer-director-camera-editor for Omnibus)
• 1956 A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp
• 1957 How the F-100 Got Its Tail (20 min., for Omnibus)
• 1957-9 Frames of Reference, Coulomb's Law, A Magnet Laboratory, Crystals
• 1958 Bernstein in Israel (30 min., Omnibus)
• 1959 Bernstein in Moscow (55 min.)
• 1959 Bull Fight at Malaga (20 min.)
• 1960 Primary (30 min.)

• 1960 Adventures on the New Frontier (possibly a longer version of Primary, Close-Up, ABC)
• 1960 Yank! No! (55 min., Close-Up, ABC)
• 1960 Kenya: Land of the White Ghost (Close-Up, ABC)
• 1961 The Children Were Watching (dir. Leacock, Close-Up, ABC)

• 1960 On the Pole (aka, Eddie, 55 min, co-produced and directed, The Living Camera)
• 1961 Peter and Johnny (55 min., produced by Leacock, The Living Camera)
• 1961 The Chair (55 min., co-produced, directed, and photographed, The Living Camera)
• 1962 Nehru (55 min, co-produced, directed, and shot with Gregory Shuker, The Living Camera)
• 1962 Susan Starr (54 min., filmed by a number of cinematographers, including Leacock, The Living Camera)

• 1963 Crisis (55 min.)
• 1963 Happy Mother's Day (30 min.)
• 1964 Republicans - The New Breed (30 min., with Noel E. Parmentel Jr.)
• 1965 A Stravinsky Portrait (55 min., made with Rolf Liebermann)
• 1965 Geza Anda (30 min, with Rolf Liebermann)
• 1965 Ku Klux Klan - Invisible Empire (50 min., produced and written by David Lowe for CBS Reports)
• 1966 Oh Mein Pa-Pa! (made with Rolf Liebermann)
• 1966 The Anatomy of Cindy Fine (20 min.)
• 1966 Old Age, The Wasted Years (30 min. x 2 for WNET)
• 1966 Monterey Pop! (assisted D.A. Pennebaker)
• 1968 1-AM - 1-PM (90 min., with Pennebaker and Jean-Luc Godard)
• 1968 French Lunch (cameraman)
• 1968 Hickory Hill (18 min., with George Plimpton)
• 1969 Chiefs (18 min., with Noel E. Parmentel Jr.)
• 1969 Maidstone (cameraman with others)
• 1970 Company (60 min., one of three cameramen)
• 1970 Queen of Apollo (20 min., with Elspeth Leacock)
• 1972 Thread (20 min.)
• 1977 Isabella Stewart Gardner (30 min.)
• 1978 Centerbeam (20 min.)
• 1980 Light Coming Through (20 min.)
• 1981 Community of Praise (55 min.)
• 1984 Lulu in Berlin (50 min.)
• 1991 Les Oeufs a la Coque de Richard Leacock (84 min.) video
• 1992 Rehearsal: The Killings of Cariola (35 min.)
• 1992 Les Vacances de Monsieur Leacock (20 min.)
• 1992 Kren: Parking (3 min.)
• 1993 "Gott sei Dank" eine Besuch bei Helga Feddersen (30 min.)
• 1993 Felix et Josephine (33 min.)
• 1993 Hooray! We're Fifty! 1943-1993 (30 min.)
• 1993 A Celebration of Saint Silas (30 min.)
• 1994 A Hole in the Sea
• 1996 A Musical Adventure in Siberia

Films about Leacock

• Ein Film für Bossak und Leacock (1984) – German documentarist Klaus Wildenhahn's homage to Richard Leacock and Jerzy Bossak
• On Being There with Richard Leacock by Jane Weiner, a JDB Films and Striana co-production. (work-in-progress)

 

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