Communications of the ACM
In Memoriam: Eric A. Weiss 1917-2016
Eric A. Weiss
Credit: Paul Nelson
Eric A. Weiss, a writer, editor, and electrical engineer who nurtured the nascent publication programs of a young Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), passed away on Sept. 4, 2016, at the age of 99.
Weiss spent the years 1935 through 1940 at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, earning bachelor and master of science degrees in electrical engineering. Also in 1940, he sold his first article to the monthly publication Radio Craft.
He worked at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory at Pearl Harbor and in Washington, D.C., from 1941 to 1945. He married Helen Carter in 1941 in Honolulu, and they remained together for the next 74 years.
Weiss spent nearly four decades guiding the Sun Oil Company (later known as Sun Company, and eventually, Sunoco) in computer use, serving in roles such as public issues consultant, manager of planning and administration, and coordinator of corporate computer planning. He retired from Sun in 1982, and moved with his wife to Hawaii.
He started writing for Computing Reviews as soon as it was founded in 1960, and served as its editor-in-chief from 1968 to 1970. In 1982, he assumed the role of associate editor in chief of the publication, involved in all aspects of technical literature.
Weiss wrote or edited seven computing textbooks, several of which are still available on Amazon.
In 1971, Weiss became the first chairman of the ACM Publications Board, a role he held until 1973. He also contributed articles to CACM, most notably a series of ‘Self Assessment Procedures’ that ran between 1975 and 1993, which enabled members to determine how much they knew about important emerging technologies and cited resources they could use to bring themselves up to date as needed.
In 1980, Weiss joined the editorial board of the AFIPS (American Federation of Information Processing Societies) Annals of the History of Computing (now an IEEE publication),and served as the publication’s Biographies department editor from 1982 to 1997. He was a contributing editor from 2002 through 2014, after which he served on the publication’s Advisory Board.
He also served as an advisory editor for several years for McGraw-Hill’s Control Engineering; served as associate editor for the five-year life of Abacus, a Springer-Verlag computing quarterly; and was on the editorial board of all four editions of Anthony Ralston’s The Encyclopedia of Computer Science, for which he always wrote the Literature of Computing article.
In 1978, ACM celebrated Weiss by awarding him the ACM Distinguished Service Award "for a wide range of services to ACM and the computing community over a period of more than 20 years." In 1994, ACM included Weiss in the first group of ACM Fellows named, "for his contribution to ACM and to the computing community, particularly in the field of publications and publications policy."
After his retirement from Sun in 1982, Weiss continued to focus his efforts on ACM "seven days a week," his wife of 74 years, Helen, said. "We had no time to take vacations. He took over the whole house with his books and papers and always on the telephone. I made sure he had the entire top floor to himself when we moved to Hawaii." Long into his retirement, he frequently called ACM officials to make suggestions on how they might make some aspect of the organization work better.
Computer scientist Peter J. Denning, an ACM volunteer since 1968 and a former president of the organization, recalled Weiss as "a towering figure in the ‘early adulthood’ phase of ACM – the 1960s and 1970s. He was an ever-present figure as ACM leadership struggled to define what activities ACM would undertake for the members and how it should be organized to best perform those activities. "
To Denning, "In addition to his other accomplishments, I most remember him as the man who kept the ACM leadership functioning."
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