Wolfgang Händler

Wolfgang Händler, the talented scholar and engineer, one of German computer pioneers, was born in Potsdam, Germany. He studied naval engineering from 1941 to 1944 at the Technical University of Danzig. Then he served in the German Navy.
After the War, he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Kiel from 1945 to 1948 and was awarded a degree in Mathematics. In his thesis "Nomographische Darstellung einer erweiterte Thiele-Transformation" Händler met for the first time astronomy. Perhaps, here was the origin of his interest in the history of mathematical machines, and the background of his highly interesting lectures on astrolabe, astronomic chronometers, and the old calculating devices. (Notice that in 1993 Professor Händler prepared a special course and a monograph entitled "Instrumental Mathematics: 2000 Years of Computers").
In 1958 Wolfgang Händler obtained his doctorate from the Technical University of Darmstadt with a dissertation "Ein Minimisieungsverfahren zur Synthese von Schaltkreisen Minimisieungsgraphen".
From 1948 to 1956 he was employed by the German North-Western Broadcasting Corporation (Research Division Hamburg) working on the theory of communications, and the use of computers for improvement of TV-pictures. Here, at designing filters, he met for the first time computers: BESK in Stockholm, and G1 in Goettingen. The young engineer was fascinated, he understood the epoch-making significance of computers, and subsequently devoted to them the whole his scientific life.
From 1956 to 1959 Wolfgang Händler has been with the Telefunken Corporation. He was one of the leading architects designing the first transistorised Telefunken computer TR4, the fastest European computer of those times.
From 1959 to 1963 he was Assistant Professor at the University of Saarland, then - Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Hannover.
Beginning from 1966 he was Professor of Computer Science at the University of Erlangen-Nuerenberg, where he founded in 1966 the "Institüt für Mathematishe Maschinen und Datenverarbeitung (Informatik)".
Professor Wolfgang Händler's main scientific interests were in computer architectures, especially of non-traditional type, organisation of parallel computing, microprogramming, history of mathematical instruments and machines. He was interested not just in the design and implementation of computers but rather in the development of corresponding principles. The brilliant evidence of this Händler's trait was the creation in 1974 of the "Erlangen Classification System, ECS", later named by his name.
The next area which attracted Professor Händler very much was visualisation. The first Händler's achievement in this field was related to the minimisation graphs explored in his doctor's dissertation. In one of his US Patents he described the techniques for presentation and debugging of computer programs by means of an oscillograph. In the end of 60s - beginning of 70s Händler began his work in computer graphics and organised Workshops on man-computer interface.
In the end of 70s Professor Händler launched, together with his colleague, physiologist Professor Keidel a new project "Data processing in computing devices and organisms" where the problems of bionics were examined by a new approach combining the methods and the knowledge from both computer science and physiology of thinking.
Professor Händler is the author of more than a hundred scientific publications, books and patents. One of his works should be especially noted, namely the paper "Innovative computer architecture - how to increase parallelism but not complexity". It was the first, introductory chapter of the well-known collective treatise "Parallel Processing Systems" written by world authorities on methods and tools of parallel data processing. Professor Händler offered in this work a brilliant analysis of modern computer architectures based on his elegant and effective Classification System.
Works by Professor Händler laid the foundation of a new trend in computer science related to the idea of combining various computer models within a single structure. A good example of such an approach is the associative model embedded into the universal architecture of von Neumann type.
Wolfgang Händler was the leader and the active participant of several famous projects of parallel computing systems realised in Erlangen: EGPA (Erlangen General Purpose Array), DIRMU (Distributed Reconfigurable Multiprocessor Kit), SUPRENUM (Supercomputer for Numerical Application) and MEMSY (Modular Expandable Multiprocessor System).
Professor Händler is the founder of a series of International Conferences CONPAR dedicated to parallel computing. The first Conference of this series took place in Erlangen (1981), the second - in Aahen (1986), the third - in Manchester (1988), the fourth - in Zurich (1991), and the fifth - in Lion (1992).
He was also the active member of Program Committees of PaCT-91 (Novosibirsk), PaCT-93 (Obninsk), PaCT-95 (St.Petersburg) and PaCT-97 (Yaroslavl).
Professor Händler was granted by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany the Distinguished Service Cross of 1st class in 1982 for his contribution to development of informatics, particularly at the University of Erlangen-Nuerenberg.
In 1991 he received the Honorary Doctorate from the Universities of Karlsruhe(Germany) and Novosibirsk(Russia).

The Scientific Council of the Novosibirsk State University declared in a special resolution:
"... to award the degree of Honorary Doctorate from the University of Novosibirsk to Wolfgang Händler, Professor of the Erlangen-Nuerenberg University, for his outstanding contribution in studying informatics problems, development of methods of parallel data processing, study and comparative analysis of multiprocessor system architectures, for his great success in spreading scientific knowledge and enduring efforts in development of scientific collaboration between people of different countries".
Professor Händler was one of the glorious cohort of computer pioneers like John Atanassov, Arthur Burks, Moris Wilkes, Konrad Zuse, and others. These talented and noble people saw the purport of their life and their creative work not only in building computing machines of enormous power.
In 1991, Professor Händler wrote: "The teraflop-computer will come in a remarkable number at the end of this century. There is no doubt about it. The teraflop-multiprocessors will represent a means to an end - to numerical simulation, to huge data bases, to artificial intelligence, to expert systems and to many things else. The main question will nevertheless be whether we will wisely utilise these tools to preserve our world and its natural sources from destruction and to prevent the humanity from serious conflicts or wars".