Individual Details
Patrick Carl Fischer
(3 Dec 1935 - 26 Aug 2011)
Patrick Carl Fischer was born 3 December 1935 in St. Louis, Missouri. Patrick received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. He was head of the Computer Sciences Department at Pennsylvania State University, and is now on the faculty at the University of Tennessee in Nashville. He married first on 22 December 1956 to Linda Loomis at Farmington, Oakland County, Michigan. They were divorced in 1967. He married second on 2 April 1967 in Vancouver, British Columbia to Charlotte Froese. Charlotte has a Ph.D. from Cambridge University (Newham College). Patrick is a member of Phi Delta Kappa, and is listed in Who's Who in America.
There was one child born of the first marriage.
There was one child born of the second marriage.
Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,September 2, 2011: Patrick C. Fischer, 75, a computer scientist whose theoretical work helped make Internet searches possible but who was most widely known as an early target of the so-called Unabomber, died Aug. 26 of stomach cancer in Montgomery County, Md. Mr. Fischer was a professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville when a pipe bomb concealed in a package addressed to him exploded in his office May 5, 1982, while lecturing in Puerto Rico. The package was opened by his secretary, who suffered cuts and burns. She returned to work three weeks later. Investigators said he was apparently the fifth person targeted by the mail bomber, identified in 1996 after his arrest as Theodore Kaczynski, a Harvard-trained mathematician. Mr. Fischer later described scouring his memory for any possible links he might have had with Kaczynski in the late 1950s and early '60s at Cambridge, Mass. But while they knew many of the same people, he could not remember having met Kaczynski. After teaching at Harvard, Cornell, and Pennsylvania State University, he was appointed chairman of the computer science department at Vanderbilt in 1980. (The package of explosives was initially sent to his office at Penn State before being forwarded to Vanderbilt.) He served as chairman of computer science there until 1995 and retired in 1998. He was among an early group of mathematicians working in the field of database theory, founded on the work of Edgar F. Codd, an IBM scientist considered the inventor of database management. Mr. Fischer's study of the mathematics of query languages - the mechanics of database searches - was crucial in developing the systems now commonly employed by Google, Amazon, and other search sites.
There was one child born of the first marriage.
There was one child born of the second marriage.
Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,September 2, 2011: Patrick C. Fischer, 75, a computer scientist whose theoretical work helped make Internet searches possible but who was most widely known as an early target of the so-called Unabomber, died Aug. 26 of stomach cancer in Montgomery County, Md. Mr. Fischer was a professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville when a pipe bomb concealed in a package addressed to him exploded in his office May 5, 1982, while lecturing in Puerto Rico. The package was opened by his secretary, who suffered cuts and burns. She returned to work three weeks later. Investigators said he was apparently the fifth person targeted by the mail bomber, identified in 1996 after his arrest as Theodore Kaczynski, a Harvard-trained mathematician. Mr. Fischer later described scouring his memory for any possible links he might have had with Kaczynski in the late 1950s and early '60s at Cambridge, Mass. But while they knew many of the same people, he could not remember having met Kaczynski. After teaching at Harvard, Cornell, and Pennsylvania State University, he was appointed chairman of the computer science department at Vanderbilt in 1980. (The package of explosives was initially sent to his office at Penn State before being forwarded to Vanderbilt.) He served as chairman of computer science there until 1995 and retired in 1998. He was among an early group of mathematicians working in the field of database theory, founded on the work of Edgar F. Codd, an IBM scientist considered the inventor of database management. Mr. Fischer's study of the mathematics of query languages - the mechanics of database searches - was crucial in developing the systems now commonly employed by Google, Amazon, and other search sites.
Events
| Birth | 3 Dec 1935 | St Louis, (Independent City), Missouri |  | ||
| Marriage | 22 Dec 1956 | Farmington, Oakland Co., Michigan - Linda Loomis | |||
| Divorce | 1967 | Linda Loomis | |||
| Marriage | 2 Apr 1967 | Vancouver, , British Columbia, Canada - Charlotte Froese | |||
| Death | 26 Aug 2011 | Gaithersburg, Montgomery Co., Maryland | | ||
| Burial | Forest Hill Cemetery, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw Co., Michigan | |
Families
| Spouse | Linda Loomis ( - ) |
| Child | Carl Perry Fischer (1965 - ) |
| Spouse | Charlotte Froese ( - ) |
| Child | Carolyn Fischer (1968 - ) |
| Father | Carl Hahn Fischer (1903 - 1988) |
| Mother | Kathleen Kirkpatrick (1905 - 1999) |
| Sibling | Michael John Fischer (1942 - ) |
Endnotes
1. Find A Grave.
2. Find A Grave.
3. Find A Grave.