Eiichi Goto

was a Japanese computer scientist, the builder of one of the first general-purpose computers in Japan.

Biography Goto was born on January 26, 1931, in Shibuya, Tokyo. After attending Seikei High School he went to Tokyo University, where he graduated in 1953. He continued his graduate studies at Tokyo in physics under the supervision of Hidetoshi Takahashi, earning his doctorate in 1962. He became a faculty member at Tokyo in 1959. In 1968, he became the chief scientist of the Information Science Laboratory at RIKEN, a position he held until 1991. However, he continued to hold a position at Tokyo University as well, becoming a full professor there in 1970. He retired from the University of Tokyo in 1990, and in 1991 he moved to Kanagawa University. and also served several times on the steering committee of the Information Processing Society of Japan. This provided an alternative to the vacuum tube technology then in use for building computing devices. He completed the construction of the PC-1, one of the first general-purpose computers built in Japan, in 1958, using parametron-based logic. Soon afterwards, he proposed the Goto pair, a device related to the parametron.

In electron beam lithography, Goto's work included the development of double deflection tubes and variable shaping techniques. He won the in 1988, and in 1989 he was given the Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor by the Japanese government for his work on electron beam shaping.