Joseph Henry Condon
| Joseph Henry Condon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 15, 1935 Princeton, New Jersey, United States |
| Died | January 2, 2012 (aged 76) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater |
Johns Hopkins University （Physics, 1958 Northwestern University （Ph.D. Physics, 1963 |
| Known for |
magnetic domains digital telephone switching Unix |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science, Engineering, Physics |
| Institutions | Bell Labs |
Joseph Henry 'Joe' Condon (born February 15, 1935 – January 2, 2012) was an American computer scientist, engineer and physicist, who spent most of his career at Bell Labs. The son of Edward Condon (a distinguished American nuclear physicist, pioneer in quantum mechanics and a participant in the development of radar and nuclear weapons during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project) and Emilie Honzik Condon, he was named after the 19th century American physicist Joseph Henry.
Condon developed an interest in physics and electronics at an early age and credited his introduction to analytical thinking to an anonymous instrument maker. He attended Johns Hopkins University and received his BS degree in physics in 1958, and Northwestern University where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1963.
After graduate school, Condon joined the Metallurgy Research Division of AT&T Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey. He arrived about the same time that the division split. Formerly physics, metallurgy and chemistry were under one executive director. After the split, physics had its own director, and chemistry and metallurgy were under another. He worked for five years on solid-state physics and metals at low temperatures — electronic band structure of metals by means of the oscillatory diamagnetic susceptibility (the De Haas–van Alphen effect). His studies in beryllium and silver (1966—1968) showed that magnetic domains (later called 'Condon domains') form in non-ferromagnetic metals when the oscillating differential magnetic susceptibility is greater than unity. He developed the theory and verified it experimentally.
Condon then became interested more in electronics engineering, moving out of physics. He was exposed to UNIX on the Honeywell 516 machines in the early 1970s.
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