In Memoriam: Steve AdamFebruary 28, 1929 – June 5, 2008
Our friend and colleague, Steve Adam, passed away on June 5, 2008 in Los Altos, California. Many of us had the joy and delight of working with Steve and socializing with Steve and Edie over the past few decades at conferences and in the society’s AdCom. I have known Steve Adam since the beginning of the nineties. Although he was Hungarian electrical engineer, as I am also one, I learned of him only through IEEE. We had our first of longer talks when I got involved in the organization of IMTC/2001 in Budapest, then in the administrative committee of IMS. We have made the presentation of the venue and organizing for the Board of Directors in 1996, in Brussels. I clearly remember how we were scared to death undertaking something of this scale. Then Steve came to us and offered his help. From this time on, we always counted on him, be it the conference preparation, budgeting, organization of a local IEEE section, or urging colleagues to become active in IEEE. He was friendly, open, and helpful. He was a fixed point in our lives: since he was brought up in Hungary, his gestures, thinking and associations were so familiar to us that he could let us immediately understand what he wanted. Besides, he spoke clean Hungarian, so all this happened in our mother tongue... He is an example for us. We will very much miss him. – István Kollar Not only was Steve a major pillar of the Society, he was also a remarkable person. I remember him telling Bob and me that his office was right between the offices of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. I remember the horror story of Steve smuggling his students out of Hungary during the 1956 revolution -- crawling through the mud in the dark of night? And how they all made it! Steve and Edie were the perfect couple -- warm, fuzzy, crazy, funny and caring. While Steve had a superb technical resume and history, his recounting of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution struck me as a shining example of courage and sacrifice during extremely oppressive conditions. Steve related some of his experiences in the Hungarian Revolution to me during a two-hour layover in the Denver airport in April 2003. He was caught up almost by accident in the days of protest and street fighting in 1956 during the futile attempt to oust the Soviets from Hungary. As a young professor Steve was headed to university to teach one day when a massive crowd of protesters swept across a bridge into his path, some of his students in the crowd urged him to join them. He told me how the Hungarian people acted with integrity; when the windows of bakeries were broken, people would take the bread and cakes from display and leave money, which other people did not take. Steve quickly rose to a position of leadership in the uprising. He recounted how they learned a weakness of the Soviet tanks and that a Molotov cocktail smashed into a ventilation duct just below the turret would disable the tank. They also determined that the Soviet tank columns traveled in single-file groups of nine vehicles; the Hungarians would count the tanks as they turned a corner and then would attack the last the one in line – the ninth one; this would prevent the first eight tanks from defending the last tank. This method worked until the Soviets added a tenth tank to a column. While attacking the ninth tank machine gun fire from the tenth tank tore through Steve and he was severely wounded. The Hungarians tried to give him medical care while the Soviets pursued him but Steve required hospital care to save his life, which put him into Soviet hands. Many months of negotiations by the United Nations to gain Steve’s release followed; Steve experienced repeated cycles of hope of leaving captivity and despair when it did not happen. Eventually Steve did leave Hungary and found a place at Hewlett Packard in California. Steve is greatly missed by all of us in the I&M Society; our condolences to Edie, his wife. – Kim Fowler 2008 IEEE Joseph F. Keithley Award in Instrumentation and MeasurementSponsored by Keithley Instruments, Incorporated The IEEE Joseph F. Keithley Award in Instrumentation & Measurement award is presented for outstanding contributions in electrical measurements. It was established in 2001 and was presented for the first time in 2004. It is awarded by the IEEE. The 2008 Joseph F. Keithley Award is presented to Robert G. Fulks “For pioneering developments in automated measurements” Robert G. Fulks developed the first fully automatic bridge for measuring capacitance at General Radio Company (GenRad) and the first commercial test system for printed circuit board assemblies containing complex digital logic circuits. His career accomplishments are of lasting significance to the field of electronic test measurements, improving the efficiency, and significantly reducing the cost of system and component manufacturing. His systems have been used by major computer companies as well as the U.S. Navy to test and repair circuit boards at field repair sites, on ships and in submarines. Mr. Fulks is former chairman of the IEEE committee that developed the IEEE-488 (GPIB/HPIB) instrumentation interface standard and a former chairman of the Boston section of the IEEE group on instrumentation and measurement that later became an IEEE Society. He is past chairman of the Advanced Automatic Test Equipment Concepts committee for the U.S. Navy. He holds 10 patents and has published numerous papers in the area of electronic measurement. Mr. Fulks holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. 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