Milos Konopasek was a mechanical engineer

Mechanical engineering

Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...

 best known as the creator of TK!Solver, an iterative, constraint-based

Constraint satisfaction

In artificial intelligence and operations research, constraint satisfaction is the process of finding a solution to a set of constraints that impose conditions that the variables must satisfy. A solution is therefore a vector of variables that satisfies all constraints.The techniques used in...

 declarative

Declarative programming

In computer science, declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. Many languages applying this style attempt to minimize or eliminate side effects by describing what the program should accomplish, rather than...

 environment for the numerical solution of systems of equations.

Konopasek was born in Czechoslovakia and graduated from the Leningrad Textile Institute, Leningrad

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, USSR, and received the Ph.D. and D.Sc degrees from the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

, England. His career included management, research, and teaching positions in Czechoslovakia, United Kingdom, and the United States, including at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...

 and North Carolina State University

North Carolina State University

North Carolina State University at Raleigh is a public, coeducational, extensive research university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Commonly known as NC State, the university is part of the University of North Carolina system and is a land, sea, and space grant institution...

.

At Manchester in the late 60's and early 70's, he developed a system called "Question Answering System on mathematical models" (QAS). He expected his system to be used by a broad range of non-computer professionals and non-mathematicians who apply math to their fields.

Konopasek recognized that the new personal computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

 was an ideal vehicle for bringing his concept to the masses and developed a version of his system for them in 1977. In 1982, Software Arts

Software Arts

Software Arts was a software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979 to develop VisiCalc, which was published by a separate company, Personal Software Inc...

 commercialized TK!Solver based on his work.

Konopasek was Senior Scientist at Software Arts while holding a visiting faculty position in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T.; when TK!Solver was sold to Universal Technical Systems (Rockford, Illinois

Rockford, Illinois

Rockford is a mid-sized city located on both banks of the Rock River in far northern Illinois. Often referred to as "The Forest City", Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County, Illinois, USA. As reported in the 2010 U.S. census, the city was home to 152,871 people, the third most populated...

), he continued as Vice President of UTS.

The bulk of his research interests and contributions were in textile engineering, applied mechanics, operations research, and computer science, in areas as diverse as CAD

Computer-aided design

Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...

/CAM, large deflection analysis of slender bodies, topology of line structures,
and language design. Konopasek was a member of the ACM

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

 and the IEEE Computer Society

IEEE Computer Society

The IEEE Computer Society is a professional society of IEEE. Its purpose and scope is “to advance the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing science and technology” and the “professional standing of its members.” The CS is the largest of 38 technical societies...

.