595 Herman Goldstine

In the foreground of the portrait is a processor from the original ENEAC computer that Herman assisted in designing and programming during the Second World War. The frame of the portrait is modeled on the marvelous frame that Thomas Eakins designed for his portrait of Professor Henry Rolands. Herman made his most important contributions as a mathematician. He and John Von Neuman are widely regarded as the principal inventors of the logic system that forms the basis of the modern digital computer. I wanted to find a way to make the mental life of the mathematician part of the portrait. I asked Herman to lend me some of his original working notebooks. I photographed various pages from the notebooks, projected the images onto the frame, and incised Herman's scribbled notations and equations into the surface with an engraving tool before finishing the whole with gold leaf.- JRF