 | Neil Gunther was born in
Melbourne,
Australia. He holds undergraduate
degrees in Chemistry and Physics, a Masters Degree in Applied
Mathematics (1976) from
La Trobe University,
Australia, and a doctorate
in Theoretical Physics (1980) from the
University of Southampton,
England. As an undergraduate, he became determined to avoid computers
after dropping yet another box of his FORTRAN punch-cards containing
molecular orbital calculations for a PDP-8 minicomputer. It seemed he
was doing more for the computer than it was doing for him!
However, upon arriving in the "Silicon Valley" in 1980 (at the dawn of
the PC revolution) he went from avoiding computers to building one!
Nonetheless, in the ensuing years, his physical sciences background has
provided valuable "ignorance" for understanding how computer systems
really work.
While learning to embrace the new PC computer technology, Dr. Gunther
taught physics at San Jose State University from 1980-1981. He then
became involved in contract work for NASA and JPL, modeling
thermoelectric materials used by the power systems on the
Voyager
and
Galileo
deep spacecraft. |
