Heinz Zemanek is an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n computer pioneer who in 1955 developed the first complete transistorised computer on the European continent. The computer was named Mailüfterl

Mailüfterl

Mailüfterl is an Austrian nickname for the first transistorized computer on the European mainland. The first computers of this kind were TRADIC, Harwell CADET and TX-0.It was built in 1955 at the Vienna University of Technology by Heinz Zemanek...

 - German for "May breeze" - in reference to Whirlwind, a computer developed at MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 between 1945 and 1951.

The Vienna Lab

The IBM Laboratory Vienna, also known as the Vienna Lab, was founded in 1961 as a department of the IBM Laboratory in Böblingen

Böblingen

Böblingen is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, seat of Böblingen District. Physically Sindelfingen and Böblingen are continuous.-History:Böblingen was founded by Count Wilhelm von Tübingen-Böblingen in 1253. Württemberg acquired the town in 1357, and on 12 May 1525 one of the bloodiest battles...

, Germany, with Professor Zemanek as its first manager. Zemanek remained with the Vienna Lab until 1976, when he was appointed an IBM Fellow

IBM Fellow

An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM’s CEO. Typically only 4 to 9 IBM Fellows are appointed each year, at the annual Corporate Technical Recognition Event in May or June. It is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve.The IBM Fellows program...

. He was crucial in the creation of the formal definition of the programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 PL/I

PL/I

PL/I is a procedural, imperative computer programming language designed for scientific, engineering, business and systems programming applications...

.

For several years, Zemanek has been a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology

Vienna University of Technology

Vienna University of Technology is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Founded in 1815 as the "Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute" , it currently has about 26,200 students , 8 faculties and about 4,000 staff members...

, which features a lecture hall named in his honor. He is also a long-time member of the International Federation for Information Processing

International Federation for Information Processing

The International Federation for Information Processing is an umbrella organization for national societies working in the field of information technology. It is a non-governmental, non-profit organization with offices in Laxenburg, Austria...

, and was its president from 1971 to 1974.

Honors

Zemanek received the Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor from the German Eduard Rhein Foundation in 1998. The Heinz-Zemanek-Preis, an award for extraordinary accomplishments in the field of computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, was named after him. He was awarded the Kardinal-Innitzer-Preis award for his lifetime accomplishments in 2003.

Scouting

Professor Zemanek joined the Boy Scouts in 1932 and served as Scout Leader, International Secretary of Austria from 1946-1949 and International Commissioner of the Pfadfinder Österreichs from 1949-1954.

Literature

• Kalender und Chronologie. München : Oldenbourg, 1990
• Weltmacht Computer. Esslingen : Bechtle, 1991
• Das geistige Umfeld der Informationstechnik. Berlin : Springer, 1992
• Unser Kalender. Wien : Wiener Kath. Akad., 1995
• Vom Mailüfterl zum Internet. Wien : Picus-Verlag, 2001
• Anekdoten zur Informatik. Innsbruck : Studien-Verlag, 2001

External links

• http://www.zemanek.at/
• http://www.ict.tuwien.ac.at/zemanek/
• Oral history interview with Heinz Zemanek, Charles Babbage Institute
  Charles Babbage Institute
  The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
  
  , University of Minnesota. Zemanek discusses his engineering education and work in radar technology during World War II. Zemanek then focuses on the development of computers in Austria: magnetic drums and magnetic memory, the MAILUFTERL computer
  Mailüfterl
  Mailüfterl is an Austrian nickname for the first transistorized computer on the European mainland. The first computers of this kind were TRADIC, Harwell CADET and TX-0.It was built in 1955 at the Vienna University of Technology by Heinz Zemanek...
  
  , LOGALGOL and other compilers, the University of Vienna where Zemanek worked on his computer, the subsequent sponsorship of the project by International Business Machines Europe, and ALGOL
  ALGOL
  ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years...
  
   and PL/I
  PL/I
  PL/I is a procedural, imperative computer programming language designed for scientific, engineering, business and systems programming applications...
  
  language standards development.
• Picture (.jpg)
• life of zemanek