Thatcher, Jim

Jim Thatcher received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1963, one of the first Ph.D.s in computer science. Together with his thesis advisor, Dr. Jesse Wright, Jim then joined the Mathematical Sciences Department of IBM Research in New York. His research was in the area of mathematical computer science, automata theory, and data abstraction. Jim began moving away from the abstract and toward the practical when he and Dr. Wright, who is blind, began working on access to the personal computer for people who are blind. He developed one of the first screen readers for DOS which, in 1986,...