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B E RNARD M . O LIVE R
1916-1995
BY DAVID PACKARD
BERNARD M. OLIVER, Silicon Valley pioneer and director of
research and development at Hewlett-Packard for four decades,
died on November 23, 1995. He was seventy-nine years old.
Dr. Oliver, known to his friends and family as "Barney," a
man of enormous intellect, curiosity, and vision. He leaves
behind a legacy of extraordinary contributions in the field of
electronics, radio engineering, physics, astronomy, computer
science, and biology.
Born in Soquel, California, Barney studied electrical
engineering at Stanford University, graduating with a B.A.
degree in 1935 at the age of nineteen. Two of his fellow
students were William Hewlett and David Packard, both of
whom were impressed by their precocious classmate. The
following year Barney earned an M.S. degree from the
California Institute of Technology. He then spent a year
studying in Germany on an exchange scholarship, returning
to Caltech to complete his Ph.D., magna cum laude, in 1940.
He was twenty-four years old.
Barney then joined the renowned Bell Telephone
Laboratories in New Jersey, where he quickly established a
reputation for brilliant, creative insights and clever inventions.
He made major contributions to the development of the new
and all-important "radar," and was a key contributor to the
earliest television systems. His paper on pulse code modulation,
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
"Philosophy of PCM," remains a seminal work to this clay. While
at Bell Labs, he met and married a young actress named Priscilla
Newton, who was to share his life until she cried in 1994. They
hac! three chilclren: Karen, Gretchen, and William Eric.
While Barney was making his mark at Bell Labs, William
Hewlett anct Davic! Packard were starting a new electronics
instrumentation firm in Palo Alto, California. They decicled
that Barney was the person they needed to leas! their research
efforts. After many discussions en cl increasingly attractive of-
fers, they persuacled Barney to join their fleclgling operation.
In 1952 Barney returned to his belovecl California to become
director of research for the Hewlett-Packarc! Company.
A hands-on clirector, Barney immediately set the standarcis for
excellence that have become Hewlett-Packarcl's hallmark. In
1957 he became vice-presicient of research and development,
and in 1966 he established Hewlett-PackarcI Laboratories (HP),
the company's central research and development organization,
which he directec! until his retirement in 1981. Uncler Barney's
leadership HP Labs quickly became one of the worId's foremost
research and development organizations as well as the birthplace
of many of HP's successful products, including the HP2116, HP's
first computer; the HP9100 desktop scientific calculator; en c! the
HP35, the first scientific hanc3-helc3 calculator. Barney also served
on the Hewlett-PackarcI boars! of directors from 1973 until 1981.
While at HP, Barney continued to pursue a lifelong interest in
radio astronomy. His background in radio engineering
prompted an interest in radio astronomy and the possibility that
radio telescopes might be a means to detect extraterrestrial
intelligent life. He was fascinated when, in 1960, attempts were
made to detect radio waves from other civilizations. He had
already calculated that such a search, with existing telescopes,
made sense. He visited this first search at the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, but it was
not until 1971 that he was able to immerse himself fully in this
endeavor. Taking time off from HP, Barney guided a major
feasibility study of possible radio telescope systems for the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), sponsored by Stanford
University and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) Ames Research Center.
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BERNARD M. OLIVER
169
This effort spawned "Project Cyclops," a seminal and gran-
diose plan for a radio telescope system capable of detecting
quite ordinary extraterrestrial radio signals from great distanc-
es in our galaxy. Although the design was very sound and the
report a monument to fine scientific and technical writing,
the projected ultimate cost of the project, some tens of bil-
lions of dollars, far exceeded what was politically acceptable.
The report stands to this day as a sound description of an
ingenious and noble albeit unfulfilled enterprise.
Barney retained a close relationship to SETT throughout
the rest of his life. He made numerous contributions to the
scientific and technical design of SETI searches and systems.
Following his retirement from HP, Barney devoted his ener-
gies full-time to SETI, serving as director of the NASA Ames
SET} office from 19S3 to 1993. During this period SETI be-
came a major project within NASA with an overall budget of
more than $100 million. This project reached a milestone in
the fall of 1992 when its extremely sophisticated radio receiv-
ing equipment started searching the extraterrestrial radio
signals at both the Goldstone tracking station of NASA and
the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, the
U.S. Congress cut off funding for this project just one year
after the searching began.
Some ten years earlier, Barney had been a prime mover in
the formulation of the SET! Institute, a not-for-profit scientif-
ic institute that was formed to conduct research related to life
in the universe with maximum efficiency and at the lowest
possible cost. Disdaining bureaucracy and waste, Barney saw
the SETI Institute as an experiment that would demonstrate
that the highest research could be done with minimal man
agement and overhead cost. Upon his retirement from NASA
in Januar,v 1994, he joined the board of directors of the insti-
tute. Over the decade since its inception, the institute has
become an extremely successful research center, just as Bar-
ney imagined and planned it would. His last act for the
institute was to provide it with a major bequest to ensure its
continued activity and success for a very long time.
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Barney received a host of awards during his life, foremost of
which was the National Mecial of Science, which he received at
the White House in 1986. He served as vice-presiclent (1962)
en cl president (1965) of the Institute of Electrical and Elec-
tronics :Engineers (lEEE), after being made a fellow of its
predecessor organization, the Institute of Raclio Engineers, in
1954 and director-at-large in 1958. In 1966 he was appointed
to the Presiclent's Commission on the Patent System. In 1990
he received both NASA's Medal for Exceptional Engineering
Achievement and the Pioneer Award of the International
Foundation for Telemetering in recognition of a lifetime of
service to the telecommunications profession.
Other significant honors include the Caltech Distinguishecl
Alumnus Award for 1972; IEEE's Lamme Medal for meritori-
ous achievement in the development of electronic
instrumentation and measuring devices, 1977; the Halley Lec-
tureship on Astronomy and Terrestrial Magnetism of Oxford
University, 1984; and the Harvey Mudd College Wright Prize
for Multidisciplinary Scientific or Engineering Accomplish-
ments, 1984. He was an adjunct professor of astronomy at the
University of California, Berkeley, and served on the boards of
directors of the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Geostar Cor-
poration, en c! Associated Universities, Inc. He was a founder
of the Biosys Corporation, which seeks environmentally sound
means to eliminate agricultural pests.
Barney was awarded some fifty patents, with some pending,
and he authored some seventy-one publications in more than
seven scientific and technical fields. In 1991 Hewlett-Packarc!
Laboratories established the Bernard M. Oliver Symposium
on the Future, an annual clistinguished lecture series in his
honor. He receiver! the NASA Group Achievement Award for
the NASA SETI project in 1993.
Barney also generously donated his time in the service of
education and the community. He server! on the Palo Alto
Unified School District Board from 1961 to 1971 and was a
member of the engineering advisory councils at both Stanford
and the University of California, Berkeley. He was appointed
for ten years as a consultant on the engineering and safe to of
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BERNARD M. OLIVER
171
the new San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit
(BART) System. He served as a consultant to the Army
Scientific Advisory Pane] and a member of the Congressional
Review Committee for the National Bureau of Standards. Just
before his death, Barney was an active member of the Dean's
Advisory Council for Natural Sciences at the University of
California, Santa Cruz.
He was a generous donor to causes he felt were important,
although he never sought public recognition for his
philanthropy. He made major contributions to the universities
he had attended, as well as to the Universities of California at
Berkeley and Santa Cruz. At Santa Cruz he endowec! a
scholarship fund in theater arts in honor of his wife, Priscilla
Newton. He contributed to many educational enterprises,
including contributions of computers and associated
equipment to micIdIe schools.
Barney especially liked to support scientific enterprises he
deemed worthy but, in some cases, neglected, especially if they
might contribute to understanding and discovery of life in the
universe. He made major contributions to the Exploratorium,
the Monterey Bay Aquarium, en cl the San Francisco State Uni-
versit,v/Marine World Dolphin Communications Project.
Among his largest gifts was one to the Allegheny Observatory
at the University of Pittsburgh to allow the upgrading of the
lens of its largest telescope, which was being used to search for
extrasolar planetary systems. Another was a $200,000 challenge
grant to the Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy
(MIRA), which used the funds to build a high-quality observa-
tory at Chew's Ridge, near Carmel, which was named the
"Oliver Station" in honor of Barney.
Barney was widely known and admired for his strong com-
munications skills, a trait Barney attributed to his mother, a
teacher who instiller! in him at an early age a reverence for
proper grammar. As a result, his scientific papers were models
of clarity, his conversations terse and to the point. In short, he
believecl that clear, concise communication was important to
success, whether the communication be with humans, dol-
phins, or people of other stars. As one final bequest to
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
humanity, just before he cried Barney finished the manuscript
of a book detailing the fine points of English grammar and
why they in fact ensure clarity in communication.
Barney Oliver's cornucopia of intellectual en cl practical gifts
to the world, as well as his personal example, will continue to
enrich us far into the future.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
radio astronomy
