Charles Molnar

Charles Edwin Molnar (1935â€"1996) was a co-developer of the first personal computer, the LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962. His collaborator was Wesley A. Clark.

The LINC originated decades before the advent of the personal computer. Its development was the result of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program that placed 20 copies of an early LINC prototype in selected biomedical research laboratories nationwide. Later, the LINC was produced in greater numbers by Digital Equipment Corp. and other computer manufacturers.

Charlie Molnar was also well known as a pioneer in the modeling of the auditory system, especially numerical models of the function of the cochlea (the inner ear).

When he died in 1996, he was working at Sun Microsystems on asynchronous circuits, with Ivan Sutherland.

Molnar received a bachelor's degree (1956) and a master's degree (1957) in electrical engineering from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. He received a doctoral degree (1966) from MIT in electrical engineering.

External links

* http://record.wustl.edu/archive/1997/01-16-97/7711.html Obituary
* http://www.auditory.org/mhonarc/1996/msg00194.html Obituary

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