George E. Pake, a physicist who helped found the research lab that gave birth to the first personal computer and other tools of the digital age, died March 4 at his home in Tucson, Ariz. He was 79.
Mr. Pake’s broad career as a university physics professor, nuclear scientist and research director earned him a National Medal of Science in 1987.
In 1970, he helped establish Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center, a hothouse in California for hundreds of scientists whose inventions helped launch the computer revolution in the 1970s and ’80s.
The mouse-driven graphical user interface that makes computers accessible without cryptic commands was initially developed at the Xerox center. So was the laser printer and Ethernet, a communications protocol to link computers.
“George to me was a giant amongst giants,” said John Seely Brown, a former director of the research center. “He was not only a phenomenal intellect and scientist, he was also a gentleman.”
Mr. Pake, who suffered from scoliosis, rarely participated in research during his eight-year tenure at the Palo Atlo center, but he is credited with creating an environment where innovations flourished. Although the center relied on Xerox for funding, Mr. Pake persuaded the company to give the group free rein and plenty of time.
Mr. Pake was born in Jeffersonville, Ohio, in 1924. After earning a doctorate in physics from Harvard University, he became a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he wrote a paper on nuclear magnetic resonance imaging that has been since cited hundreds of times by other scientists.
The man colleagues described as soft spoken with non-confrontational management style left Xerox in 1986 to direct the non-profit Institute for Research on Learning in Palo Alto. He served as emeritus director until his death.
