The loss of a colleague and mentor
Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 3:51PM This last Thursday I lost a colleague and a mentor, Dr. George Krembs. I knew him from my time working at the [now closed] IBM Kingston Development Lab. Through serendipity, he was also my father-in-law for several years. Even after that part of the relationship ended, George and I still kept in touch mostly by e-mail and sometimes by phone.
George was, by my [and many others] estimation, a brilliant man. While at IBM he was part of the team that developed many things that we take for granted. Things ranging from the development of early disk drives, to color displays, to parallel computing. By far my favorite development project that he worked on was the ability to window a television signal on a color computer display. Something that we pretty much take for granted now, but back then (1970's) was both revolutionary and visionary.
George, was a Life Member of the IEEE where he served on several standards committees and, perhaps more importantly, served on the accreditation committee which oversaw university electrical engineering curricula. It was he, who encouraged me to join the IEEE and expand my professional world outside of IBM.
Looking back, one thing I learned from George was the "Columbo" approach to problem solving. I used to watch him at work as he would attempt to understand a client's needs or why something was not working. He would seemingly wander around asking questions and doing tireless research. His approach to asking questions made him seem unsure, but in reality he was just disharming the person he was questioning. Once he gathered all the facts, his presentation style was that of the brilliant, assured professorial type that he was.
George, I learned a great deal from you. You are missed!