Myron Tribus

Myron T. Tribus (October 30, 1921 – August 31, 2016) was an American organizational theorist, who was the director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT from 1974 to 1986. He was known as leading supporter and interpreter of W. Edwards Deming, for popularizing the Bayesian methods, and for coining the term "thermoeconomics".

Born in San Francisco, Tribus graduated in 1942 from UCLA, and received his Ph.D in 1949. Tribus was a captain in the army during World War II, and worked as a design-development officer at Wright Field.

He joined General Electric and became a gas turbine design engineer, but was unhappy in industry, and went back to academia, joining the faculty of UCLA where he taught thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. He was a visiting professor and director of research at the University of Michigan between 1951 and 1953. In 1961, he was named dean of Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering., where he led the faculty in developing a new curriculum based on engineering design and entrepreneurship. He saw hands-on engineering design as being essential at all levels of the curriculum, saying, "Knowledge without know-how is sterile."

In 1969, Tribus accepted a post in the Nixon administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology. On November 23, 1970, he left the Department of Commerce after 18 months to become Senior V.P. for Research & Engineering in Xerox Corp. From 1974 to 1986 Tribus directed the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT.

Tribus is a co-founder of Exergy Inc., a company specializing in the design of advanced, high-efficiency power production systems. In recent years he has focused on the theory of structural cognitive modifiability of Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist.

Tribus received several awards:

Tribus research interests ranged from academic subjects such as heat transfer, fluid mechanics, probability theory, statistical inference, and thermodynamics, to applied topics such as sea water demineralization, aircraft heating, aircraft ice prevention, and the design of engineering curricula. He also had a strong influence concerning the domains of industrial quality, ergonomics, and education.

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