James H. Pomerene

James Herbert Pomerene (June 22, 1920 – December 7, 2008) was an electrical engineer and computer pioneer.

Biography Pomerene was born June 22, 1920, in Yonkers, New York. His father was Joel Pomerene and mother was Elsie Bower.

He received the BS degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University in 1942. In 1945 he married Edythe Schwenn and had three children.

Collaborating with engineers such as Bruce Gilchrist and Y.K. Wong, they invented a fast adder which incorporated a speed up technique for asynchronous adders reducing the time for additive carry-overs to propagate. This design was actually later incorporated in one commercial computer, the Philco TRANSAC S-2000, introduced in 1957, the first commercial transistorized computer. He was appointed an IBM Fellow in 1976. He held 37 patents when he retired from IBM in 1993.

Pomerene was a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He received the IEEE Edison Medal in 1993, and the Eckert-Mauchly Award in 2006.

He died December 7, 2008, in Chappaqua, New York.

Selected papers Gilchrist, B.; Pomerene, J.; Wong, S.Y., "Fast carry logic for digital computers" IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers, EC-4 (Dec.1955), pp. 133–136. Esterin, B.; Gilchrist, B.; Pomerene, J. H., "A Note on High Speed Digital Multiplication" IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers, vol. EC-5, p. 140 (1956).