Irving S. Reed - Anecdotes

Anecdotes

The University of Southern California graduate school of electrical engineering required doctoral students to pass an oral screening exam, in which there were eight categories of test questions. Reed always asked the questions about electromagnetism and specifically Maxwell's equations, which he obviously viewed as fundamental to communication theory.

While a student in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, Reed did not complete his required physical education courses due to time pressure and was set to enter the Navy. The only way he could graduate was to obtain a special release from Robert A. Millikan, the university's president and a former physical education instructor as well as a Nobel Prize winner and a noted hard-liner on the physical education requirement. Fortunately, as Reed was in Millikan's office pleading his case, he saw reprints of two papers he had published as an undergraduate on the president's table and drew them to Millikan's attention. Millikan smiled and said "You seem to me a healthy young man. I believe you will do well in the service of your country as a graduate of the California Institute of Technology."

Reed and colleagues demonstrated the MADDIDA computer to John Von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The problem set for MADDIDA was computation of a mathematical function. Von Neumann, a noted lightning calculator, kept up with the computer and checked its results with a paper and pencil.