The biggest innovations are sometimes borne from seemingly small advancements. Developments such as finding ways to compress computer files, creating a practical phone battery, crafting an unassuming text editor, and filing a software patent sent shockwaves through the IT industry, leaving indelible marks on the modern world.
As Computerworld looks back on the lives of 13 scientists, authors, advocates, and entrepreneurs we lost this year who hailed from Israel, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and the United States, we remember their contributions and legacies that are felt worldwide.
Nabil Bukhalid: The father of Lebanon’s internet
1957 – January 4, 2023
ImaginingtheInternet (CC BY 3.0)
Nabil Bukhalid
In 1988, Nabil Bukhalid was working as a biomedical engineer in a hospital in Beirut, capital of his native Lebanon. As the Lebanese civil war raged outside, Bukhalid hunkered inside, experimenting with the hospital’s computers. Wanting to reach the world beyond the war, Bukhalid took his hospital experience and led a team that connected his alma mater, the American University of Beirut, to the nascent internet.
Bukhalid maintained his momentum beyond that initial connection: he founded the Lebanese Domain Registry and administered the .lb top-level domain; he co-founded both the Internet Society Lebanon Chapter and the Lebanese Internet Center; and he led the computing and networking services department at AUB, where he later earned an executive master of business administration. These contributions to his country’s infrastructure earned Bukhalid the nickname “Father of the Internet” in Lebanon, and he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2017.
Bukhalid died at 65 from a heart attack.
Jerome R. Cox Jr.: Work hard, be kind
May 24, 1925 – January 17, 2023
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Jerome R. Cox Jr.
Jerome Cox Jr. may be best remembered for his contribution to the Laboratory INstrument Computer, often considered the first personal computer. LINC, first conceived by Wesley Clark, was developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, but the team felt a different sponsor would allow them to develop it further. Cox, the founding chairman of the computer science department at Washington University in St. Louis, brought the LINC team and their computer to his school in 1964. LINC development continued and thrived in the school’s newly founded Biomedical Computing Laboratory, founded by Cox.
But Cox was not only an administrator and academic; he pioneered many advancements in biomedical research himself. Cox co-developed a computer for detecting deafness, leading to the standardization of hearing tests in infants; he conducted research into hearing loss in employees in industrial environments; and his work with CT and PET scanners improved the diagnosis of cancers and heart rhythm irregularities.
A graduate of MIT, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical…
2023-12-28 13:00:03
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