Thomas Fischer Weiss

Thomas Fischer Weiss was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1934. He left Prague with his parents in 1939 after the German occupation, spent 20 months as a refugee in war-torn Europe, and immigrated to the US in 1941, arriving in New York City at age 6 ½. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1952, City College of New York in 1956 with a BEE, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with an SM in 1959 and a PhD in 1963. Tom was a Professor at MIT from 1963 to 2000 in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a research interest in communication theory, biophysics, and physiology, and with a special research interest in the physiology of hearing. He participated in Project Athena at MIT that pioneered the use of computers in teaching. He had a faculty appointment at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He was appointed an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England in 1998. He has published over 50 scientific/technical papers, a two-volume textbook on Cellular Biophysics, more than a dozen papers on family history, and an extensive personal and family history posted on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum https://digitalarchive-assets.ushmm.org/pdf/bib261529_001_001.pdf. Tom edited two memorial books for the towns of Buczacz and Rozniatow. Tom is a widower and has three children and six grandchildren. He now lives in a retirement community, North Hill in Needham, Massachusetts.