Former ISU faculty member John Vincent Atanasoff, who was instrumental in building the world’s first digital computer, will be recognized posthumously with an honorary doctorate degree of science during the ISU commencement May 5-6.

His son, John Vincent Atanasoff II, will address the graduating students and accept the award for his father, who died in 1995. The younger Atanasoff received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Iowa State and is now the president, CEO and chairman of the board of Colorado MEDtech, Inc., in Boulder, Colo.

In the basement of the Physics building from 1939 to 1942, Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry built the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, which introduced basic principles used in nearly every computer today.

“I’m extremely pleased and honored to have my dad recognized this way,” Atanasoff said. “I understand he is only the second person to receive this degree. I think the other person was George Washington Carver, so he’s in good company.”

The late Atanasoff has been recognized nationally and internationally, including his induction into the Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame. He also was the recipient of the Holley Medal, awarded by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“He has received a number of honors, both in the United States and in the world,” Atanasoff said. “At Iowa State, they have named a building after him and some other honors. He, in truth, was an academic, and he was a professor at Iowa State, so I think this recognition is a nice honor.”

The elder Atanasoff and Berry were called into service during World War II, and their invention was dismantled for parts during their absence. The Ames Laboratory underwent a privately funded project to reconstruct the ABC, and the replica has been touring Iowa and was demonstrated in Washington, D.C. in 1997.

“We needed to prove to the world that the machine originally worked,” said Guy Helmer, graduate in computer science, who has been working on the project since 1997. “We proved it did, in fact, work as advertised, and that it was more than the detractors said it was.”

A 1973 court decision credited Atanasoff with the invention of the digital computer, overturning a patent for the computer that credited the invention to the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

The principles introduced by the ABC have stood the test of time, and the honorary degree recognizing Atanasoff’s contributions will ingrain his name in ISU history.