John Vincent Atanasoff was born on October 4, 1903 a few miles west of Hamilton, New York. John was a brother to Ethelyn, Margaret, Theodore, Avis, Raymond, Melva, and Irving. John’s parents were Ivan and Iva. Ivan was a Bulgarian immigrant named Ivan Atanasov. His last name was changed to Atanasoff by immigrant officials.
John went to grade school at Brewster, Florida. This was also where John started understanding the concepts of electricity. The house in Brewster was John’s first house with electricity. When John was nine years old, he found and corrected faulty electric wiring in a back-porch light.
As a kid John was a good student, and liked sports, especially baseball. He lost this interest when his dad bought a slide rule to help him with his job. John was very fascinated with the slide. Later his dad found that he didn’t need the slide rule. The only person who remembered the slide rule was John.
John was interested in mathematics at a very young age. With the help of his mother John studied a college algebra book that was his father’s. Studying these books led to higher levels of math in studies of trigonometric problems. After a few months, John didn’t need help from his mother. He did it himself. Just before John was supposed to enter high school, his family and he moved to Old Chicory, Florida. John completed the four year high school course in two years. By the time he finished high school, John had found that he wanted to be a theoretic physicist.
In 1921, John entered the University of Florida in Gainesville. The problem was that this university didn’t offer a degree in theoretic physics, so John took electrical engineering courses. From taking these courses John got interested in electrical engineering. Therefore he continued on to higher mathematics. John graduated from the University of Florida in 1925 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. His academic grades averaged an “A”.
After receiving many job offers from many different schools, including Harvard, John chose Iowa State because they were the first school to ask him to attend , and this university had a good reputation in engineering and science. In the summer of 1925, at the age of 22, he boarded a train and headed off for Ames, Iowa. He wanted to make his name known in the world of science. In the months of September through November John was busy teaching two undergraduate mathematics classes and working towards his masters degree. His social life was minimal due to his active schedule, but one night John decided to go to an organized club for southern students away from home. This is where John met Lura Meeks, a twenty-five year old home economics major from Oklahoma. After meeting Lura, John started dating her. Soon they were visiting each other frequently. In the year of 1926, in June, John got his masters degree and married Lura.
John was hired to work at Iowa State. After working there for a year, John and Lura’s oldest child was born. Her name was Elsie. When Elsie was about one year old, John’s family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he had been accepted as a doctoral candidate. A little bit later John and Lura had two more children, Joanne and John. John was busy studying the Monroe Calculator which was the most advanced calculator of it’s time. After studying this calculator, he was determined to make a quicker, faster, and easier type of computer. After moving back to Iowa State, John succeeded in this, in the year of 1939.
He then left to be the Chief of the Acoustics Division at the Naval Ordinance Lab. He was in charge of making a computer for the United States Navy. He was also involved in the testing for the first atomic test in the Pacific. He liked this very much.
When John returned to Iowa State he found that the computer Clifford Berry and he had put together, was dismantled. Nobody was notified about this dismantling. John was very disappointed.
The long separation of Lura and John led to the divorce of the couple in 1949. In the same year, John married Alice Crosby.
On October 21, 1973, John was awarded by a judge for the invention of the first electronic digital computer made at Iowa State University. In 1974 John was asked to be the guest of honor and grand marshall at the annual Veisha celebration.
During his life John received many other awards. Some are: the U.S. Navy Distinguished Service Award, the Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame, the Governors Science Medal, and the Holley Medal, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
After a long illness, on June 15, 1995 John V. Atanasoff died of a stroke.