Japanese Computer Pioneers

Oizumi JuroOizumi Juro
1913〜1991

Oizumi Juro was born at 12th march 1913 in Sendai.He graduated from Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Tohoku Imperial University at 1935, and soon obtained the position in Anritsu Electric Company.In this company he made the collaboration research work with Japanese army, and developed the top-level army communication system. In this development the most remarkable research was the design of the feedback amplifier circuit and this became the base of his doctor thesis.In 1951, he was invited as the associate professor of Tohoku University and became full professor in 1953.

At the beginning of 1950, Japan stand at the dawn stage in the development of the computer science and the information technology. After becoming full professor, he devoted himself in the research of the new fields of the computer science and made the great contribution to the development of this research field. By these works, he was respected as the big pioneer of the computer science in Japan.

His important research work in the early stage in Tohoku Univ. was the promotion of the ambitious project which aimed to build the biggest computer in Japan. This project started at 1957 by his strong leadership which forecast the future of computer technology of Japan and this project was successfully finished at 1960 cooperation with NEC. This machine boasts a glorious history and called as SENAC-1.

This project gave big impact to the computer industries of Japan because the design concept of the computer architecture was a striking original at that time and it was almost the same as that of the present computer architecture. His research work in the second stage was to promote the leading research on the computer network. From early time, he fully recognized the importance of the network and foresees its impact to the future society. In early of 1960, he started the network project which aimed to connect all computer centers of universities and colleges in Tohoku Area Japan to the computer center of Tohoku University. By this project, he succeeded to implement TSS on large scale computer at first in Japan and at the same time published the paper on the Time-Sharing System based on the round robin scheduling. This is first theoretical paper of TSS in the world.

He also had the strong collaboration program with Univ. of Hawaii to build the Pan Pacific Area Network and succeeded the connection between Tohoku Univ. and Univ. of Hawaii of each computer center by the satellite ATS-1. This project also gave the big impact to the network research of Japan after this.

Besides many important projects, he also gave full play to the development of the computer science and technology of Japan as the member of Science Council of Japan.

He died at 1991 giving a great under taking.


(Noguchi Shoichi)