Our Ultracomputer group studied a wide range of issues in highly parallel computing. We constructed two generations of hardware an 8-processor, bus-based system in the 1980s and a 16-processor, 16-memory module system in the 90s. Both systems have hardware support for fetch-and-add, our coordination primitive. The newer system contained full-custom switches of our own design that combine simultaneous references to the same memory address, thereby avoiding one important class of hot-spot contention problems. We had a very highly parallel operating system Symunix running on both systems.

I worked, mostly part-time, at the NEC Research Institute (now part of NEC Labs America) from where I was first involved in the LAMP group that has constructed several Local Area MultiProcessors (a.k.a. Beowolfs, clusters, COWs, and NOWs). I was briefly involved in a protein folding computation and was also part of the Intermemory group that studied highly distributed world-wide archival storage. My last project at NEC involved forming ``web communities'', i.e., pages related by link structure or language similarity.

I was born 2 August 1945 in Queens NYC to Frances and Irving Gottlieb. When I was five, my family moved to a NYC surburb called Elmont, Long Island where I attended the local public elementary and high schools. I went to MIT as an undergraduate and Brandeis as a graduate student. All my degrees are in mathematics.

My introduction to computers (specifically an IBM 650 and a Bendix G15) occurred during high school when I attended the Columbia University Science Honors Program on Saturdays.

My beautiful wife Alice is a dermatologist and rheumatologist. She obtained a Ph.D. in immunology from Rockefeller University, an M.D. from Cornell Medical School, and medical sub-specialty degrees from N.Y. Hospital (Internal Medicine and Dermatology) and the Hospital for Special Surgery (Rheumatology). Our two boys, David and Michael, were born in 1982 and 1985; they married Marissa Gottlieb (nee Williams) and Maureen Watkins. Our grandson Hunter was born to Marissa and David in July, 2013.