Gene Myron Amdahl

During the 1960s, Gene Amdahl was Director of IBM's Advanced Computing Systems Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, where he led the design of the IBM System/360 family of computer systems, working with project manager Fred Brooks, Jr.

In 1970, he left IBM to found the Amdahl Corporation, a maker of IBM Plug-Compatible Mainframes (PCMs) where he remained until 1980. He has also served as Chairman of Trilogy Systems, which developed high-performance computer systems based on wafer-scale integration technology.

Amdahl has won many awards, including the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award (1987) and the IEEE Computer Entrepreneur Award (1989). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering and the IEEE and a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (1979). He received a B.S.E.P degree from South Dakota State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin.