Management Consultant, Brookhaven Science Associates

Inducted in 2011

Evelyn Berezin passed away on December 8, 2018 at the age of 93. She was an American computer designer who held many patents in the field of word processing and hardware design. She is known for designing the first-ever word processor and for the development of the first banking computer system along with the initial airline reservation system.

After a 35 year career in technology, in 1988, Evelyn took a different path as a consultant and independent contractor to technology companies. In 1980, she served as president of the Greenhouse Management Company—a general partner of a venture capital group dedicated to early stage high technology companies. She worked with Greenhouse Management until 1987.

From 1969 to 1976, Evelyn ran the Redactron Corporation—a company she founded to develop and manufacture word processing systems—she was the only female president at the time and was named the Most Senior Businesswoman in the United States by "BusinessWeek" magazine.

By 1962, Evelyn worked with Teleregister in Connecticut to design one of the largest systems built (at that time)—a reservations system for United Airlines. The design of the central system (three independent, linked processors) served 60 cities throughout the United States with a one-second response time and no central system failures in 11 years of operation. In 1951, she joined a startup company, Elecom that built digital computers.

Evelyn has served on board of many public companies. Her awards and honors include honorary doctorates from Adelphi University and from Eastern Michigan University; she served as a board member for CIGNA, Standard Microsystems, Koppers, and Datapoint; and on the board of the Stony Brook Foundation, the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Boyce Thompson Institute.

Evelyn is inducted in the Long Island Technology Hall of Fame (2006) and has awards from the Long Island Distinguished Leadership; she is an honoree of Women Achiever’s Against the Odds from the Long Island Fund for Women and Girls (2006) and has a fellowship with the Computer History Museum.

Evelyn was born in New York City in 1925. With a scholarship at NYU, she received her bachelor of arts in physics in 1945 and an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship for graduate study at NYU in 1946.

NYU
Wikipedia
Computer History