Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator. He is known particularly for his engineering work on analog computers, and for the memex. During World War II, he headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. He died of a heart attack at the age of 80.

About Vannevar Bush in brief

Summary Vannevar BushVannevar Bush was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator. He is known particularly for his engineering work on analog computers, and for the memex. During World War II, he headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out. He emphasized the importance of scientific research to national security and economic well-being, and was chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation. Bush was a well-known policymaker and public intellectual during World War II, when he was in effect the first presidential science advisor. He was also a prolific inventor, and patented a string of his own inventions, including a lawn mower that looked like a bicycle and a pen that plotted the terrain over which it traveled. He died of a heart attack at the age of 80. He had a son, John, and two daughters, Edith and Reba. He also had a daughter, Barbara, who died in a car accident in 2000. He left behind a wife and four children, and a daughter-in-law, Barbara Bush, who is now a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Bush is buried in Mount Vernon, Massachusetts, with his wife, Barbara. He has one son, David, and one daughter, Mary, who are both former MIT professors and now live in New York City. Bush died of lung cancer at age 80, and is survived by his wife and two children, Barbara and Mary Bush, and his son David Bush, Jr., who is a professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bush also has a son-in law, David Bush Jr, who worked for the Raytheon Company in the 1970s and 1980s. Bush wrote a book about his time at MIT, and later wrote a biography of his father, John Vannevar Bush, III. Bush’s son David was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, and dated Phoebe Clara Davis, who also came from Chelsea, Massachusetts. Bush worked at General Electric in Schenectady, New York, for USD 14 a week. He later worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an electrical inspector, but preferred to study acoustics, a popular field at the time that led many to study that did not interest him. Bush became vice president of MIT and dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938. In 1945, he wrote a report to the President of the United States, The Endless Frontier, in which he called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for thecreation of the National Science Foundation. His essay, “As We May Think,” influenced generations of computer scientists, who drew inspiration from his vision of the future. Bush and his family lived in Massachusetts until his death at age 81 in 1968. He and his wife had three children, David and Mary.