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Obituary:
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 12, 1981
Deceased Name: JAMES BROWN FISK, WAS HEAD OF BELL LABS
By Burr Van Atta
Inquirer Staff Writer
James Brown Fisk, 70, a scientist whose work led to the development of
transistors, solar power and long- range radar, died Monday at the
Elizabethtown, N.Y., Hospital. Mr. Fisk, formerly of Basking Ridge, N.J.,
lived in Keen Valley, N.Y.
Mr. Fisk, a physicist and a mathematician, headed the prestigious Bell
Telephone Laboratories for more than a decade. He entered public service early
in his career and frequently represented the United States before the United
Nations and in arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union.
He was born in West Warwick, R.I. Mr. Fisk studied physics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate in
1936. After a fellowship at Cambridge University in England, he joined Bell
Labs in 1939.
During World War II, he directed research at Bell on high-frequency radar.
The work led to research into solid state electronics. That, in turn, led to
two great technological developments - the transistor, which revolutionized
communications and made possible the modern computer, and a solar device that
converts sunlight to electrical power.
It was during the wartime period that Mr. Fisk and another Bell scientist,
Dr. William Shockley, worked out one of the first complete mathematical
computations for an atomic reactor. The work was incorporated into the data
used by the Atomic Energy Commission when it was created in 1946. Mr. Fisk
became the commission's first director of research.
He rejoined Bell Labs in 1949 and rose through the ranks of scientists to
become president and then chairman of the board.
In 1958 President Dwight D. Eisenhower selected him to represent the United
States in the opening round of talks with the Soviets on international arms
control and international inspections. Out of the talks came the sound- and
radiation-detection systems used for the last 20 years in detecting nuclear
explosions.
He was chairman of the U.S. technical delegation at the Geneva Nuclear Test
Ban Conference.
According to his associates, Mr. Fisk was a good-humored man with a broad
knowledge of science and the world, a man not easily frustrated and one who
had a story for any and every occasion. Those qualities, they said, made him
the perfect negotiator.
They described him as calm, unassuming, sensitive and tolerant of others'
views. No table-pounder, he was inclined to sit back and let others express
their views before he gave his.
Said one associate, " Dr. Fisk has patience to the extent that it gets on my
nerves."
Mr. Fisk was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corp. for
19 years. He was active on the boards of directors of some of the nation's
major firms, including the Cummins Engine Co., American Cyanamid Co.; the
Equitable Life Assurance Society, Corning Glass Works; Nepune International
Co. and General American Investors Co. Inc.
He was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee and served on
the boards of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation, the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and the board
of overseers of Harvard.
Mr. Fisk was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Radio Engineers and was a member of
the National Academy of Science, the American Philosophic Society and the
Harvard and Ausable clubs.
Surviving are his wife, Cynthia Hoar Fisk, and three sons, Samuel, Charles
and Zachary.
Funeral services will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Keene Valley
Congregational Church in Keene Valley, N.Y.
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The H600 Project Genealogy DB
1910 - 1981 (70 years)