Dr. Bernard (Barney) M. Oliver

A scientist who made contributions in many fields, including radar, television, and computers, he joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York upon completing his studies at Stanford (graduating at the age of 19) and the California Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate in 1940. He co-developed pulse-code modulation (PCM) with John R. Pierce and Claude Shannon and applied for the patent in 1946. The three of them published "The Philosophy of PCM" in 1948. In 1952, he became Hewlett-Packard's Director of Research and in 1957, he was named Vice President for R&D, and joined HP's Board of Directors. He was there until his retirement in 1981. He was pivotal in the explosive growth of modern technology in the Silicon Valley and it was under his leadership that the first hand-held calculators were produced at Hewlett-Packard in the early 1970's. He is also a recognized pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and worked on a project called Project Cyclops. He was president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1965; and in 1986, he was a National Medal of Science recipient for Engineering Science. On February 11, 2004 it was announced that he had been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.