Jacob “Jack” Goldman, who left Ford Motor Co. to launch Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center, died on December 20, 2011 at age 90.

A physicist by training, Goldman taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and MIT before leaving academia for industry. As director of Ford's Scientific Research Laboratory, he succeeded by recruiting top talent and giving them free rein to innovate. He maintained that tradition at Xerox, where he served as chief scientist, chief technical officer, and senior vice president for research and development. Goldman established two of the company's R&D centers: the Xerox Research Center of Canada and Xerox PARC.

It is not hyperbole to say that researchers at PARC created the modern computing world. Among their inventions are the personal computer, the laser printer, the graphical user interface, Ethernet, bitmap graphics, the WYSIWYG text editor, the Smalltalk language and IDE, and the notion of ubiquitous computing.

People say that Xerox PARC did the research that made Apple and Microsoft successful, and in a sense that is true. Apple's pre-Macintosh GUI-based system, the Lisa, was heavily influenced by Xerox PARC work. In fact, Xerox earned the right to purchase 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock by giving Apple engineers three days' access to PARC. It was during those three days that the Lisa – and ultimately the Macintosh – were born. Microsoft's Bill Gates was also a visitor to PARC. Microsoft tech visionaries Larry Tessler, Charles Simonyi, and others were recruited from PARC.

PARC – it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox now, and no longer called Xerox PARC – continues to do important research on cutting-edge topics in computer science.

Web recommendation: Irresistible. 'Nuff said. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. At the moment, he doesn't own a suit.