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Epilogue
I am now 92 years old. Looking back I have lived an eventful
life personally, and I grew up during an interesting time in
history. The United States grew up with me from a second tier
country during World War I to the position it holds today.
Even more interesting, to me, has been the explosion of
technology that has occurred during my lifetime and my
front row seat on many of these developments. I have had
the opportunity to tour the globe, living and working in
North America, South America, Asia, and Europe. I also had
a chance to work with some of the greatest names in science
of the twentieth century, starting at MIT in the 1930s up until
today.
I've had the good fortune to be on the leading edge of the
development of four different professions during my lifetime.
First I was a registered professional Electrical Engineer during
the 1930s and 40s before the transistor was invented. The radar
and Identifi cation Friend or Foe (IFF) projects that I worked
on still have applications today for every single aircraft that
fl ys with a transponder for air traffi c control.
Military Operations Research (OR) was a fl edgling
fi eld when I joined the profession right after World War II.
The B-52s still fl ying for Strategic Air Command carry one
defensive gun in the tail because of my input. During the four
decades I was active in OR I helped lay the ground work for
analysis techniques still used in this fi eld.
Information Science was a fi eld that developed alongside
the invention of the computer. Being in on the ground fl oor
at MIT, and continuing up through my Ph.D. from the City
University in London, I was an active member of the scientifi c
community focused on information retrieval and predicting
the productivity of authors in the pre-internet era.
But Disaster Management became my main love. It
developed as a profession during my lifetime and once again