X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Alice Burks


Alice Burks

She retired from full-time work after marrying Moore School lecturer Dr. Arthur Burks, a mathematician who served as one of the principal engineers in the construction of the ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic digital computer, built at the Moore School between 1943 and 1946.

At the conclusion of Arthur's work with the Moore School and at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1946, Alice moved with Arthur to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan and helped to found the computer science department.

This pitted the Burkses in a deeply acrimonious controversy against exponents of ENIAC inventors John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.

Arthur Burks

In the 1970s and 1980s Burks, working with his wife Alice, authored a number of articles on the ENIAC, and a book on the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.

Decades later, Burks and his wife Alice Burks outlined their case for the subject matter of the ENIAC having been derived from John Vincent Atanasoff.



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