Stibitz, George Robert

(born April 20, 1904, York, Pa., U.S.—died Jan. 31, 1995, Hanover, N.H.) U.S. mathematician and inventor. He received a Ph.D. from Cornell University. In 1940 he and Samuel Williams, a colleague at Bell Labs, built the Complex Number Calculator, considered a forerunner of the digital computer. He accomplished the first remote computer operation by inputting problems via a teleprinter, and he pioneered computer applications in biomedical areas, such as the movement of oxygen in the lungs, brain cell structure, diffusion of nutrients and drugs in the body, and capillary transport. The holder of 38 patents, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1983.

Stibitz, George Robert (1904– ) computer engineer; born in York, Pa. He began work at the Bell Labs (1930) on problems relating to the calculation of complex numbers. In 1937 he built a binary-based relay switch system that made possible a computer to perform simple calculations (1939). In 1940 he transmitted computer work over the telephone. He worked for the government during World War II. In 1964, using computer modeling to study human physiology, he became a research associate at Dartmouth Medical School. He was named professor in 1965 and retired in 1973.