Paul Baran - Early Life

Early Life

Paul Baran was born in Grodno, Second Polish Republic (now part of Belarus) on April 29, 1926. He was the youngest of three children in a Jewish family, with the Yiddish given name "Pesach". His family moved to the United States on May 11, 1928, settling in Boston and later in Philadelphia, where his father, Morris "Moshe" Baran (1884–1979), opened a grocery store. He graduated from Drexel University in 1949 (then called Drexel Institute of Technology), with a degree in electrical engineering. He then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, where he did technical work on UNIVAC models, the first brand of commercial computers in the USA. In 1955 he married Evelyn Murphy, moved to Los Angeles, and worked for Hughes Aircraft on radar systems. He obtained his Masters degree in engineering from UCLA in 1959, with advisor Gerald Estrin while taking night classes. His thesis was on character recognition.

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