Slocum, Jerry

Aerospace engineer, collector of mechanical puzzles, author.

Jerry Slocum was born in Illinois and received his education at the University of Illinois and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Trained as an aerospace engineer with a minor in experimental psychology, Slocum began his career designing cockpit displays for military fighter aircraft. He served at Hughes Aircraft Company for thirty-eight years until his retirement in 1993. Slocum began collecting mechanical puzzles as a child. In 1955, he launched a lifetime of research activity on the history and design of mechanical puzzles with an article in Science & Mechanics magazine. Slocum has published several books on puzzles, including The 15 Puzzle Book, The Tangram Book, The Book of Ingenious & Diabolical Puzzles, and Puzzles Old & New. Upon his retirement, he established the Slocum Puzzle Foundation as a nonprofit public benefit corporation to promote the study of puzzles and support their use as educational tools. In 2006, Slocum announced that he would donate his world-renowned collection of over 32,000 puzzles, 4,000 puzzle-related books, and his papers to the Lilly Library.