14-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Paul A. Strassmann, World War II Resistance Fighter Turned Computer Guru, Dies at 96
When Paul A. Strassmann arrived as a 19-year-old immigrant in New York in 1948, his most notable work experience was as a guerrilla warrior who blew up train tracks to stall Nazi troop movements in Slovakia during World War II.
In New York, Strassmann diversified his skills. He sold socks at a department store in Queens and studied civil engineering at Cooper Union. As a surveyor during summer breaks, he dodged scorpions in Israel and rattlesnakes in West Virginia. Later, while studying industrial management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Strassmann learned how to use a mainframe computer as part of a project to forecast traffic and estimate the number of toll collectors needed on the New Jersey Turnpike, providing enough data for a 600-page thesis.
