Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush (March 11 1890 - June 30, 1974)

Born in Everett, MA. Educated at Taft University, graduating in 1913. Joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT in 1919. He constructed a Differential Analyser based on Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. He was president of the Carnegie Institute of Washington in 1939 and in the same year appointed chair of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. In 1940, Bush became chairman of the National Defence Research Committee and in 1941 director of Office of Scientific Research and Development, which controlled the Manhattan Project. He recommended the creation of what would become the National Science Foundation. Bush was also a cofounder of the defence contractor Raytheon.

He invented the concept of what he called the memex in the 1930s, "a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility" and indicated what would become hypertext. His ideas were first published in the essay "As We May Think" in Atlantic Monthly in 1945.

The Vannevar Bush Award was created by the NSB in 1980 to honor contributions to public service.