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WILLIAM K. LINVILL
1919-1980
BY DAVID C. WHITE
WILLIAM K LINVILL died suddenly on August 7, 1980. Bill Lin-
vill combined in one personality an unusual number of rare human
gifts. With his passing, engineering loses one of its most thoughtful
social philosophers. He combined a simple, direct, and manifold
concern for his fellow human beings with brilliance as a teacher,
faithfulness to methodology as a scholar of engineering, and the
breadth of vision of a true social generalist.
William K. Linvill was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on
August 8, 1919. He and his identical twin John were the sons of
Thomas Grimes Linvill and Emma Crayne Linvill. The twin sons
were both scientifically inclined, and they studied math and physics
at William Jewell College in Missouri. Then they entered the Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where they both did gradu-
ate work in electrical engineering. Bill Linvill worked in the
Servomechanisms Laboratory at MIT, where feedback control sys-
tems concepts were in the very early state of development. His Sc.D.
thesis, "Analysis and Design of Sampled-Data Control Systems,"
was a pioneering contribution to the use of sampling techniques
applied to intermittent noisy data used for systems control. He was
an early leader in this now highly developed field of electronic signals
and computers used in interactive control systems. After completing
his Sc.D. in 1949, Dr. Linvill joined the faculty of MIT as an
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. Promoted to Associate
Professor in 1953, he continued his research and teaching in sam-
179
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180
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
pled-data computer control systems, making contributions to the
successful design of the SAGE defense system developed by MIT's
Lincoln Laboratory. In 1956 he resigned his MIT associate profes-
sorship to lead systems analysis work, first at the Institute for
Defense Analyses and later at the Rand Corporation.
In 1960 Dr. Linvill joined the Electrical Engineering faculty of
Stanford University. It was at Stanford that he brought to fruition
the concepts he had been developing for applying systems and deci-
sion analysis to large-scale engineering and social systems. He con-
cerned himself with developing ways to meet society's need to utilize
technology and adapt to implications of technological applications.
He was a visionary in perceiving the pressures that rapidly advanc-
ing technology places on human beings and the difficulties created
by the necessity for technological choices to be made by the whole
society rather than by a few specialists. He applied his vision to
creation of an interdisciplinary academic program that would
broaden the perception and enhance the systems analysis skills of his
graduate students. In 1967 he became the Founding Chairman of
the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems with a program
emphasizing rational analysis of complex socioeconomic engineering
systems.
Dr. Linvill's work in the philosophical aspects of problem solving
and the issues of how technology can better serve society made him a
pioneer of a new engineering discipline. As a leading scholar and
teacher in this emerging field, he recognized early the critical need
for practical internships in such an applied field. He encouraged
more than 150 of his doctoral candidates over the next twelve years
to take full-time field training of at least one year in government or
industry. His focus was always on those hard, complex problems that
should be the real concerns of our society. He believed that an
educated mind needed highly developed skills of both quantification
and qualification. He emphasized to his students that good common
sense in applying words and numbers in analysis was a great asset.
Demanding, yet gentle, with a ready wit and winning smile, he
attracted many bright students and colleagues who shared his inter-
est in technology policy. He was a true humanitarian who sought
always to develop fully the human potential in those about him.
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WILLIAM K. LINVILL
181
In the last years of his life he perceived an intensifying need for
those educated in technology policy analysis and development to
take a more entrepreneurial role. Toward this end, his last project
was to begin creation of a prototype Technology Policy Exploratory
Center embodying close interaction among several universities and
private corporations. Through this new institution he hoped to facili-
tate the formation of critical masses of human resources around
needed new policy initiatives that could be implemented by private
entrepreneurship. Full development of this pioneering concept falls
to others as an intellectual legacy from Bill Linvill.
In addition to being a member of the National Academy of Engi-
neering, Dr. Linvill was honored by appointment as a Fellow of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as a member
of the National Research Council's Commission on Sociotechnical
Systems, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's
Advisory Council for Space and Terrestrial Applications, the West-
inghouse Electronic Research Advisory Council, and the National
Bureau of Standards Visiting Committee. He was a consultant to a
number of organizations including Stanford Research Institute
International and the National Science Foundation. He was a Visit-
ing Professor, "Chair of Free Enterprise," at the University of
Texas.
He is survived by his wife, the former Bessie Blythe Burkhardt;
his children, Barbara, Mary Lou, Thomas, Anne, and Carl; his
twin brother John, also a member of the National Academy of
Engineering; and his brother fames of Kansas City, Missouri.
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