‘Unassuming’ Dartmouth professor was a major innovator
Tom Kurtz, right, helps Amy Nachman of Hanover, left, and Muriel Steinberg, center, of Quechee, with a Bridge-related question during the a weekly American Contract Bridge League game at Lebanon Community College in Lebanon, N.H., on June 25, 2014. Kurtz, who created the league, celebrated his last day before retiring. (Valley News - Sarah Priestap) Tom Kurtz, right, helps Amy Nachman, left, of Hanover, and Muriel Steinberg, center, of Quechee, with a Bridge-related question during the weekly American Contract Bridge League game at Lebanon Community College in Lebanon on Wednesday. Kurtz, who created the Lebanon league, was celebrating his last day before retiring. Valley News — Sarah Priestap
Tom Kurtz, right, who developed BASIC programming language with John Kemeny at Dartmouth College in the mid-1960's, talks with Tim Tregubov, technical director of the Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation Lab, left, about the Early Warning Project during an event to showcase Dartmouth computing projects in Hanover Wednesday, April 30, 2014. The Early Warning Project is a website that tries to predict atrocities in countries around the world by compiling and analyzing data based on contributing factors to unrest. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. James M. Patterson
Thomas E. Kurtz, at left, with his colleague John Kemeny. MUST CREDIT: Courtesy of Trustees of Dartmouth College Courtesy of Trustees of Dartmouth College
Math professor Tom Kurtz works with Michael Busch '66, testing the new GE-225 computer in the basement of College Hall in 1964. Busch, along with John McGeachie '65, worked out the process that allowed different GE computers to communicate and helped build the original Dartmouth time-sharing system. (Photo by Adrian N. Bouchard/courtesy of Rauner Special Collections Library) Rauner Special Collections Libra
Tom Kurtz sits in his computer room in his home in Hanover, N.H., on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018. Kurtz is one of two people that created the BASIC computer language and launched one of the first long-distance computer networks, the Dartmouth time-sharing system. (Valley News - August Frank) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. August Frank
An instruction manual for the beginners all-purpose symbolic installation code, or BASIC, sits on the table in Tom Kurtz home in Hanover, N.H., on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018. Kurtz is one of two people that created the BASIC computer language and launched one of the first long-distance computer networks, the Dartmouth time-sharing system. (Valley News - August Frank) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. August Frank
Photographed on June 10, 2019, the New Hampshire Department of Transportation has installed a historical marker near the Hanover, N.H., town line on Route 120 to mark the invention of the BASIC computer language at Dartmouth College by John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz in 1964. (Valley News - Geoff Hansen) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Geoff Hansen
| Published: 11-20-2024 7:31 PM |
LEBANON — Thomas Kurtz, a Dartmouth math professor, legend in the field of computer science, and founder of a local bridge club, died at the age of 96 last week.
Kurtz is most well known for co-developing the BASIC programming language and the first general-purpose computer time-sharing system with Dartmouth colleague John Kemeny. But some Upper Valley residents remember him for who he was outside of academia.
“He was very unassuming,” said David Bailey, 72, whose family attended the United Church of Christ at Dartmouth with Kurtz and his family. “He was just a very nice, regular, ordinary guy, which is why I was surprised to finally understand how important what he had done was.”
BASIC, which stands for Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was a simpler and more accessible coding language than the ones available at the time it launched in 1964. BASIC allowed for those not trained in computer programming to code more easily.
Bailey and his classmates at Hanover High School used to go to Dartmouth’s Kiewit Computation Center, which Kurtz was the director of at the time, to learn BASIC. (Kiewit was demolished in 2000 to make room for a new classroom building.)
“I didn’t even know that he had been responsible for the time sharing mechanism that allowed us to all use the computers at the same time,” Bailey said.
Kurtz and Kemeny, who went on to serve as Dartmouth’s president, also created a system that allowed BASIC to run simultaneously on separate terminals, a huge feat for the ‘60s.
Kurtz was an avid player of the card game bridge. In 2001, he founded a club that met in the basement of what is now River Valley Community College in downtown Lebanon.
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“He was the mover and shaker for bridge in the Upper Valley,” Jane Verdrager, director of the Eastman Bridge Club, said while playing a game at the the Richard W. Black Recreation & Senior Center in Hanover.
When Verdrager entered the Upper Valley bridge scene 15 years ago, Kurtz and his wife, Aggie, immediately took her under their wing.
“They would take me home with them every Wednesday to teach me how to do the scoring,” she said.
In 2014, Kurtz retired as director of the club and passed the torch to Verdrager, who now directs a weekly game in Hanover and another at Eastman in Grantham.
In addition to playing competitively, Kurtz also gave free bridge lessons. “He was so soft-spoken,” said Lebanon resident Bruce Garland who learned from Kurtz and was playing in Hanover on Wednesday, “he never got mad.”
A few years ago, when Kurtz’s dementia made it impossible for him to play, his wife began bringing home the cards for him to sort.
“Tom would sort them into suits and match the hands that were there,” said retired Dartmouth professor and bridge player Robert Lewis Drysdale, “It kept him connected to the game.”
Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at e rothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.
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