Edmund Callis Berkeley

Author of the landmark 1949 book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think, Berkeley became famous for describing the principles behind computing machines and surveying the most prominent examples of the time, including machines from MIT, Harvard, the Moore School, Bell Laboratories, and elsewhere. He co-founded the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1947 and was also a social activist who worked to achieve conditions that might minimize the threat of nuclear war. He received a BA in Mathematics and Logic from Harvard in 1930. Berkeley pursued a career as an insurance actuary at Prudential Insurance from 1934–48, except for service in the United States Navy during World War II.

He saw George Stibitz's calculator at Bell Laboratories in 1939, and the Harvard Mark I in 1942. In November 1946 he drafted a specification for "Sequence Controlled Calculators for the Prudential", which led to signing a contract with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1947 for one of the first UNIVAC computers. Berkeley left Prudential in 1948 to become an independent consultant when the company forbade him to work on projects related to avoiding nuclear war, even on his own time. He sometimes wrote using the pseudonym "Neil D. MacDonald".

In Giant Brains, Berkeley also outlined the first personal computer, Simon. Plans on how to build this computer were published in the journal Radio Electronics in 1950 and 1951. Simon used relay logic and cost about $600 to construct, and the first working model was built at Columbia University with the help of two graduate students.

Berkeley founded, published, and edited Computers and Automation, thought to be the first computer magazine. He also created the Geniac and Brainiac toy computers. He was the author of several publications including, but not limited to: Giant Brains, or Machines That Think (1949); Computers: Their Operation and Applications (1956); Symbolic Logic and Intelligent Machines (1959); Probability and Statistics: An Introduction through Experiments (1961); The Computer Revolution (1962); The Programming Language LISP: Its Operation and Applications (1964); and A Guide to Mathematics for the Intelligent Nonmathematician (1966).