Jeff Hawkins

Jeff Hawkins
Hawkins at eTech 2007
Born	Jeffrey Hawkins (1957-06-01) June 1, 1957 (age 59) Huntington, New York, U.S.
Alma mater	Cornell University
Occupation	Businessperson
Known for	Co-founder of Palm and Handspring

Jeffrey Hawkins (/ˈhɔːkɪnz/; born June 1, 1957) is the American founder of Palm Computing (where he invented the PalmPilot) and Handspring (where he invented the Treo). He has since turned to work on neuroscience full-time, founded the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience (formerly the Redwood Neuroscience Institute) in 2002, founded Numenta in 2005 and published On Intelligence describing his memory-prediction framework theory of the brain. In 2003 he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering "for the creation of the hand-held computing paradigm and the creation of the first commercially successful example of a hand-held computing device."

Hawkins also serves on the Advisory Board of the Secular Coalition for America and offers advice to the coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.

Hawkins grew up with an inventive family on the north shore of Long Island. They developed a floating air cushion platform that was used for waterfront concerts. He attended Cornell University, where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1979. He went to work for Intel, and then moved to GRiD Systems in 1982 where he developed rapid application development (RAD) software (GRiDtask). Hawkins' interest in pattern recognition for speech and text input to computers led him to enroll in the biophysics program at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. While there he patented a "pattern classifier" for hand written text, but his PhD proposal was rejected, apparently because none of the professors there were working in that field. The setback led him back to GRiD, where, as vice president of research, he developed their pen-based computing initiative that in 1989 spawned the GRiDPad, one of the first tablet computers.