Erich Bloch

Erich Bloch (January 9, 1925 – November 25, 2016) was a German-born American electrical engineer and administrator. He was involved with developing IBM's first transistorized supercomputer, 7030 Stretch, and mainframe computer, System/360. He served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990.

Biography Bloch was born in Sulzburg, Germany in 1925. Bloch was the son of Josef Bloch a Jewish businessman and Lina Rothschild a housewife, who were both later murdered in the Holocaust. He survived the war in a refugee camp in Switzerland and emigrated in 1948 to the United States.

After stepping down as director of the National Science Foundation, Bloch joined the Council on Competitiveness as its first distinguished fellow. The IEEE Computer Society awarded him the Computer Pioneer Award in 1993 for high speed computing. In 2002, the National Science Board honored Bloch with the Vannevar Bush Award. He was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2004 "for engineering management of the IBM Stretch supercomputer, and of the Solid Logic Technology used in the IBM System/360, which revolutionized the computer industry."

Bloch died at the age of 91 from complications of Alzheimer's disease on 25 November 2016 in Washington, D.C.

Awards National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1985) Computer Pioneer Award (1993) Vannevar Bush Award (2002) Computer History Museum Fellow (2004)