Myron Tribus
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Myron Tribus was at the origin or promoted many concepts with often strong and sometimes less successful results. His career as a leader in engineering and management dates from World War II, when he did key pioneering work on aircraft ice prevention as a design-development officer at Wright Field. He has served as an aircraft engine designer for General Electric, Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology in the U.S. Commerce Department, Senior V.P. for Research & Engineering in Xerox Corp., and Dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, where he led the faculty in developing a new curriculum based on engineering design and entrepreneurship. He served for 16 years on the faculty of engineering at UCLA, 2 years on the faculty of the University of Michigan and 12 years at MIT.
Tribus is perhaps best known as former director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT. He headed the center when it published W. Edwards Deming's book, Out of the Crisis, and became a leading supporter and interpreter of W. Edwards Deming. He is also known in the 1970s for an insightful book called Rational descriptions, decisions and designs which popularized Bayesian methods with examples.
He has published over 100 papers on topics ranging from academic subjects, such as heat transfer, fluid mechanics, probability theory, statistical inference, and thermodynamics, to applied topics such as sea water demineralization, aircraft heating, aircraft ice prevention, and the design of engineering curricula. He also had a strong influence concerning the domains of industrial quality, ergonomics, and education. Tribus published two books; Thermostatics and Thermodynamics, which provided the first textbook that bases the laws of thermodynamics on information theory rather than on the classical arguments, and Rational Descriptions, Decisions, and Designs, which introduces Bayesian Decision methods into the engineering design process.
Tribus is a co-founder of Exergy Inc., a company specializing in the design of advanced, high-efficiency power production systems. In recent years he has focused on the theory of structural cognitive modifiability of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist.
From the back cover of his book on thermodynamics and thermostatics 1961,[1]
While serving with the Air Force during World War II, Dr. Tribus developed thermal ice protection equipment for aircraft. For his accomplishments in this field he received the Thurman H. Bane Award from the Institute of Aero-Space Sciences and the Wright Brother's Medal from the Society of Automotive Engineers. He was also given the Alfred Noble Prize as a joint award from seven societies.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Myron Tribus, 1961, Thermodynamics and Thermostatics: An Introduction to Energy, Information and States of Matter, with Engineering Applications, Back dust cover, D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 24 West 40 Street, New York 18, New York, U.S.A.
[edit] Bibliography
Tribus, Myron (1961). Thermodynamics and Thermostatics: An Introduction to Energy, Information and States of Matter, with Engineering Applications. D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 24 West 40 Street, New York 18, New York, U.S.A.. ASIN: B000ARSH5S.
Tribus, Myron (1969). Rational Descriptions, Decisions and Designs. Pergamon Press Inc., Maxwell House Fairview Park Elmsford, New York 10523. ISBN 0-08-006393-4.
Tribus, Myron (1978). The Maximum Entropy Formalism (ed. R. D. Levine and M. Tribus). MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12080-1.
Tribus, Myron (1989). Deployment flow charting. Quality & Productivity, Inc. ASIN: B00072FLOG.
Tribus, Myron (1992). Quality first: Selected papers on quality and productivity improvement. National Society of Professional Engineers; 4th ed edition. ASIN: B0006OXP8Y.
Tribus, Myron (1992). The Germ theory of management. SPC Press, Inc. ISBN 0-945320-33-7.
