Eiichi Goto

Eiichi Goto (January 26, 1931 to June 12, 2005) was a Japanese physicist and computer scientist who, as a graduate student in Hidetosi Takahasi's laboratory at the University of Tokyo, invented the parametron in 1954, a logic element combining a ferrite core with a capacitor that used the phase of a parametric oscillation to represent binary states as a low cost, reliable alternative to vacuum tubes. He led construction of the PC-1, completed in 1958, one of the first general purpose stored program computers built in Japan, using roughly 4,200 parametrons for its logic, a design that shaped Japan's early computer industry and trained its first generation of computer engineers. He remained at the University of Tokyo as a faculty member from 1959, becoming a full professor by 1970, later also served as chief scientist at RIKEN's Information Science Laboratory from 1968 to 1991, and made further contributions including the quantum flux parametron, a solution to the firing squad synchronization problem, and hash consing in his HLISP system.