Burks, Arthur W. (Arthur Walter), 1915-2008

Professor of philosophy and of computer and communication sciences at the University of Michigan.

Computer scientist and computer historian, respectively.

Computer scientist.

Arthur W. Burks, well known as one of the principal designers and a joint inventor of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) in the 1940s, was born on October 13, 1915, in Duluth, Minnesota. He received his B.A. in mathematics from DePauw University in 1936, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in 1937 and 1941, both in philosophy from the University of Michigan. Throughout his career, Professor Burks pursued both philosophy and computer science, finding many parallels between the two fields.

After earning his Ph.D., Burks found that academic positions in philosophy were scarce at the time, so he took a government course in electrical engineering at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He soon became an instructor and research engineer at the Moore School, where from June 1943 to February 1946 he worked with John Maunchly and J. Presper Eckert on the research, development, design, and construction of the ENIAC, the first large-scale general-purpose electronic digital computer. His primary responsibility was the ENIAC's multiplier. The ENIAC's original purpose was to speed up the calculations needed to create firing tables, which showed gunners how to aim their weapons. At the time these calculations were done by hand, by mathematicians who were known as "computers" (in fact, Burks' wife, Alice, whom he married in 1943, was one of these mathematicians at the Moore School). Since ENIAC was not completed until 1946, it was not able to contribute much to the war effort, but it did usher in a new era in computation.

After World War II, Burks maintained his dual interest in philosophy and computers. While still at the Moore School, he worked part-time as an instructor of philosophy at Swarthmore College during 1945 and 1946. He spent some time in early 1946 (as well as the summers of 1947 and 1948) at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where he worked with John von Neumann and Herman Goldstine on developing the logical design of an electronic digital computer. The basic design they produced became the prototype for many computers built by universities, government research units and IBM.

Burks joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan in 1946 as as assistant professor, becoming associate professor in 1948 and professor in 1954. In 1956 he organized and became the director of the Logic of Computers Group at the University of Michigan. This group was supported by government contracts and conducted research in automata theory, adaptive systems, the interactive use of digital computers, and the simulation of natural systems. In 1957 Burks and a colleague started a graduate program in Computer and Communication Sciences at Michigan, which became a department in the College of Literature, Science, and Arts in 1967. Burks served as the department's chairman from 1967 to 1971. In 1970 Burks received the University of Michigan Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, and in 1978 he was named the Henry Russel Lecturer, the highest honor the university can bestow upon a senior faculty member.

Professor Burks' career also included a variety of consulting and visiting professor assignments. He served as a consultant with the Burroughs Corporation (1949-1954), directing a research group which worked on the logical design of digital computers for data processing, on user-oriented programming languages and programs to translate them into machine language, and on automata theory. He also served as a consultant to the Argonne National Laboratory (1950-1951), helping to design the ORACLE computer. From July 1965 to December 1966, Burks was a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India, and during the 1971-72 school year he held a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

Professor Burks was particularly interested in Charles Sanders Peirce, founder of the philosophical doctrine of pragmatism, and edited two volumes of Peirce's papers while a research associate in philosophy at Harvard University in 1955. In 1960, as a visiting professor in applied mathematics at the University of Illinois, Burks completed and edited John von Neumann's papers on self-reproducing cellular automata. Professor Burks served as president of the American Philosophical Association (1972-1973) and of the Philosophy of Science Association (1975-1977). He also published numerous articles on the subjects of computers and philosophy, as well as a book, Chance, Cause, Reason, in 1977. He and his wife, Alice R. Burks, published two definitive works in the history of computing: a long article, "The ENIAC: First General-Purpose Electronic Computer," in 1981, and a book, The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story, in 1988 (The University of Michigan Press).