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In Memoriam

Eugene “Eke” Kerr Fisher ’40 #194

Jeff Fisher, Unofficially

Born 11/29/1916, died 2/19/2002

After graduating from Pomona, “Eke” joined the Army and was eventually sent on a covert mission to Italy where he solved serious problems with the Army’s howitzers. His entire life was composed of solving one impossible problem after another. Once the experts would give up on something – regardless of the industry – E.K. would be called in and would provide them with their solution within a very short period of time. Among the companies and industries who sought his help were the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the aircraft industry, the missile and space industry, medical researchers … the list goes on and on.

He had a wonderful bass singing voice (was in the Pomona choir) and would occasionally sing for different occasions, or for the family when we were lucky. He was a very talented and complicated man and fiercely proud of his association with Pomona College.

Regards,

Jeff Fisher, Number One Son


Jeff Fisher, Officially

On Tuesday, February 19, 2002, there passed away Eugene K. Fisher, a pioneer of the computer age. Mr. Fisher graduated from Pomona College in 1940 with a degree in physics and, after serving in the army as an artillery officer during World War II, pursued graduate studies in aeronautical engineering at MIT. In 1950 he took his young family to Brazil where he was a professor at the Brazilian Aeronautical Institute. He returned to Southern California in 1952 and took a job at Marquardet Aircraft Company, testing the large ramjet engines that periodically rattled the San Fernando Valley in those days.

A visionary, Mr. Fisher guided Marquardt, and, later, Lockheed Aircraft (Van Nuys offices) into the computer age. He was the first at those companies to apply computers to the solution of engineering and manufacturing problems. According to an ASTME brief from August of 1964, he was “the major contributor to the establishment of Lockheed’s extensive data handling advances in support of all major contractual and in-house electronic data processing systems.” During his time with Lockheed Mr. Fisher built the computer department from a nucleus of 9 to a department of 1400 that reached into every corner of the business.

In 1956, while working in Van Nuys, Mr. Fisher conceived and designed the first digital control automatic riveting machinery at Lockheed, which provided basic tooling for the entire Electra and P-3 manufacturing programs. In 1960 Mr. Fisher recognized the value of applying the information storage and sorting ability of computers to information databases. In that year he designed and built a “management skills locator” that allowed the “Personnel Department” to query a database of over 6000 employees on the basis of 585 descriptors to locate personnel with special talents. That effort resulted in the development of Dialog, at first a program used internally at Lockheed, then, in 1972, transformed by one of his protégés into a highly profitable public information resource that preceded the Internet by 20 years. Dialog continues, to this day, to provide a “deep” searchable database of information on business, intellectual property, science and technology.

Starting in 1957 Mr. Fisher managed highly secure computer programs for the CIA designed to predict solutions of multiple, interrelated technical problems. He had fifteen employees in highly secure conditions collecting data on Russian missile launches and was said to have results of their tests analyzed before they did. His knowledge of aeronautical engineering, coupled with extensive study of telemetry data from those launches resulted in his being called to Washington to verify suspicions about the nature of cargo on board ships bound for Cuba. His expert testimony was used to inform John F. Kennedy’s decision to blockade Cuba.

In the mid-60s Mr. Fisher was Project Leader of the Lockheed sponsored Computer Graphics programs of ASTME focused on computer aided design. At that time he was also the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company’s representative to the corporate wide Computer Aided Design/Computer Graphics Users Group.

Mr. Fisher worked with some of the technical powerhouses of his day: Linus Pauling, with whom he worked to process spectrophotometer data; Alexander M. Poniatoff, founder of Ampex, as friend and foundation volunteer; Gerhard Dirks, known as the “father of the modern computer,” with whom he worked, as Vice President, starting a new business, Dirks Electronics; Dr. Travis Windsor, leading researcher in heart and vascular disease with whom Mr. Fisher did research on the application of computer data reduction to diagnosis of heart and circulatory disorders.

Mr. Fisher cultivated a lifelong habit of contributing his time and energy to worthy causes. When seatbelts for automobiles were introduced (as aftermarket devices) he recognized their potential, purchased cases of seat belts and offered, to all his employees, to install them on their cars, charging only his cost for the belts. He spent every weekend for months drilling and bolting to help save lives. He devoted over 19 years to heart research and studies of aging. During this time he was on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Winsor Heart Research foundation, Trustee of the Diabetes Nutrition Foundation and Trustee of the Foundation for Nutrition and Stress Research. He spearheaded Lockheed’s contribution of computer time to the analysis of medical data and published numerous papers on the use of computer analysis in diagnosis of heart and circulatory diseases. In the ‘70s he contributed time to summer camps, fascinating children with a transparent bee hive, worked with the Oakland School System as a volunteer instructor in the adult education program and as an RSVP volunteer at the San Mateo County jail in the work release program.

Overall, it was people that mattered the most. His trips took longer because motorists were stranded, life was interrupted, because friends needed guidance, the world was filled with people’s problems, and E. K. Fisher’s mission was to help. Into his 80s Mr. Fisher maintained contact with childhood friends, college chums and accomplished people whose careers he had helped to launch. Mr. Fisher is survived by his 6 children, 13 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. He was the lynchpin of their lives and will be sorely missed.


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