Artillery typically had a range of up to several miles and therefore needed to be directed with pinpoint precision.This was achieved using a set of firing tables which enabled a gunner to determine the correct elevation and azimuth for a given target range and the prevailing environmental conditions. Exterior ballistics, the science of projectile flight, had become important during the First World War and was to become even more important in the second. In 1939 Goldstine began a teaching career at the University of Michigan, until the United States' entry into the war brought his ballistics expertise into demand.In July 1942 he was enlisted and posted to the Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL) at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, with the rank of lieutenant. Afterwards von Neumann started to work with members of the computer project and in June 1945 he wrote the "Edvac Report", the blueprint on which almost all computers have been based up to the present day.Herman Heine Goldstine was born in Chicago in 1913, the son of a lawyer. He graduated in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1933, and obtained a doctorate in 1936. For the next three years he worked as a research assistant under Gilbert Bliss, an authority on the mathematical theory of exterior ballistics. Herman Goldstine, one of the five co-inventors of the modern computer, was also a fine historian with a gift for a compelling narrative.
As with heart disease, the first obvious symptoms of the cancer itself appeared only just before he died. He devoted much time in his final months to convincing others to undergo colonoscopies, a painful and invasive process which, if conducted early enough, might have saved his life. Ironically, the use of CT to conduct "virtual" colonoscopies is just beginning to make widespread and regular testing a realistic prospect.David King received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Atherosclerosis Imaging at the American Heart Association annual meeting last year, and in December was honoured with a Distinguished Alumnus award from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nottingham University.Matt King and James Ehrlich. Although an early colon resection appeared successful (leading him thereafter to sign his name with a final semi-colon), the cancer later reappeared in his liver and did not respond to chemotherapy.
By 1990, he had become the intellectual "brain trust" co-ordinating research activities and international conferences that led to hundreds of papers in the field. Along the way, his evangelical zeal and revolutionary ideas also persuaded numerous academic physicians to re-direct their careers to the study of plaque imaging.In 1981 he moved from EMI, first to Kontron Electronics, then in 1983, as Director of Clinical Services, to the medical systems company Imatron (now part of GE) in San Francisco, where he remained until his death. But his distinguishing feature was his ability to relate to other people and to inspire so many of them to work with him towards his visions for the future of medical electronics.King was diagnosed with colon cancer after trying to give blood in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. A modest man who maintained strong links with his family in the UK, he had a well-developed sense of humour which never deserted him.