Zevi Salsburg audio-visual collection

Zevi W. Salsburg was professor of chemistry and mathematical science at Rice University from 1954 until his death in 1970. Salsburg earned his Ph.D in 1953 at Yale, where he was a member of the influential John Kirkwood group in statistical mechanics. He came to Rice in 1954 as a member of the Chemistry department, later holding an appointment in mathematical science as well. He published extensively in chemical physics, held fellowships from NSF, the National Research Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and consulted for both Los Alamos and the Lawrence Radiation Lab at Livermore. Salsburg was also a key contributor, as a fund-raiser and designer, of the R1 computer that was built by Rice faculty in Abercrombie Lab.

In 1956, three Rice University faculty members, Zevi Salsburg, John Kilpatrick, and Larry Biedenharn, brought supercomputing to the school for the first time in the form of the R1 computer. While it wasn’t the first computer at Rice, it was the university’s first large computational research computer.