Oral history interview with Seymour E. Goodman

Abstract

In this oral history, Seymour Goodman describes his career in computing, beginning with his education including undergraduate work at Columbia University and earning a Ph.D. in mathematical physics at California Institute of Technology. Facing the downturn in physics employment around 1970, he took a position at the University of Virginia and transformed himself into a computer scientist specializing in algorithms. While on a sabbatical leave at Princeton University, he became interested in the social and political analysis of computers, especially in the Soviet Union and other East Bloc states. While at Princeton he began what developed into the MOSAIC project (unrelated to the web browser of that name) which flourished with his move to the University of Arizona. MOSAIC staff collected available information on Soviet computing and conducted numerous study tours to investigate the state of Soviet Bloc computing. (Reports from many of these study tours are available at CBI.) This work supported U.S. government efforts in export control policy and implementation. After the 1989-91 political transitions, Goodman’s group began another series of international visitations and field research on the global diffusion of the internet.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1116862, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.”