Myron Tribus

Myron Tribus (October 30, 1921 – August 31, 2016) was an American organizational theorist, who was the director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT from 1974 to 1986. He was known as leading supporter and interpreter of W. Edwards Deming, for popularizing the Bayesian methods, and for coining the term "thermoeconomics".

Early life Myron Tribus was born in San Francisco, California, on October 30, 1921 to Marie Kramer and Edward Lefkowitz. Myron's father died shortly thereafter, and his mother, a short-hand typist, remarried to Julius Tribus. He graduated in 1942 from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, and received his Ph.D in engineering in 1949 from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Career Tribus was a captain in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, and worked as a design-development officer at Wright Field. While in the Air Force, he developed thermal ice protection equipment for aircraft. While at UCLA, he hosted Threshold, an hour long television program dealing with science and its impact on society. It aired on CBS in 1958. He remained in the role until 1969. On November 23, 1970, he left the Department of Commerce after 18 months to become Senior Vice President for Research & Engineering in Xerox Corp. From 1974 to 1986, Tribus directed the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This idea was close to a quotation by Paul Valéry about the spontaneous creation of counter-measures defeating measures. It was reformulated by Stephen Covey as "Whoever tries to manage his business only looking at figures will soon not have anymore the figures nor the business."

Personal life Tribus married Cora "Sue" Davis, whom he met during the war. Together, they had two daughters: Kamala and Lou Andreas. American Society of Civil Engineers's Alfred Noble Prize as a joint award from seven societies for his work developing a thermal ice protection system for aircraft, 1952. UCLA's Engineering Alumnus of the Year, 1971–1972 American Statistical Association's Deming Lecturer Award in 1998 for "The Contributions of W. Edwards Deming to the Improvement of Education" Tribus, Myron (1989). Deployment flow charting. Quality & Productivity, Inc. ASIN Tribus, Myron (1992). Quality first: Selected papers on quality and productivity improvement. National Society of Professional Engineers; 4th ed edition. Tribus, Myron (1992). The Germ theory of management. SPC Press.

He also published Goals and Gaols, a short work in which he illustrated with many historic examples how premature specialization may push students to a dead end, given the fast obsolescence of techniques.

Tribus, Myron (1967). Goals and Gaols, Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 57, p. 282.