Grigore C. Moisil – The Man Who Shaped My Future

“With his unmistakable voice, he spoke to us about cybernetics and computers, and I am certain that it was then that I decided my future had to be connected with them.”

Professor Vasile Baltac

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Academician Grigore C. Moisil. I write these lines 70 years after I first met him, in Bucharest in 1956, at the closing ceremony of the national Mathematics Olympiad for school students.

I was a teenager with a passion for mathematics, and Grigore C. Moisil, then President of the Society of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, presented me with the prize for first place in the country. His signature in the book I received on that occasion had, as I often recalled in later years, “the value of a medal” for me.

I could not have known then that this encounter, followed by several lectures he gave at my school, would be the beginning of an intellectual influence that was to shape my professional life decisively. Moisil did not speak to us only about mathematics. In his unmistakable voice, he spoke about cybernetics and electronic computers at a time when such ideas were not merely new, but politically uncomfortable.

There are people whose importance we measure by the works they publish, the theories they develop or the institutions they build. But there are others whose influence reaches beyond such achievements: they change ways of thinking, open new paths and, above all, persuade young people that the future need not resemble the present.

Grigore C. Moisil was such a person.

An Encounter with the Future

In 1954, I entered I. L. Caragiale High School in Ploiești, a school with a remarkable tradition in mathematics. Gazeta Matematică and the Mathematics Olympiads were, for us, far more than competitions; they were institutions that helped shape our intellectual development. I solved practically every problem published in Gazeta Matematică, and seeing my name appear, issue after issue, among the successful solvers awakened in me a competitive spirit that has remained with me throughout my life.

I came first nationally in the Mathematics Olympiad in both High School Year 9 and Year 10, an achievement I was to repeat during my first two years at university in the national student mathematics competitions.

It was in this environment that I met Grigore C. Moisil. He presented us with our prizes, but what he said to us mattered far more than the prizes themselves. Whenever the opportunity arose, he spoke about cybernetics and electronic computers.

From today’s perspective, this may seem perfectly natural. It was anything but natural in Romania between 1955 and 1960. Cybernetics had been ideologically stigmatised and was described in official Soviet-inspired literature as a “reactionary bourgeois science”. In that climate, Moisil spoke to teenagers about computers and encouraged them to study this emerging field.

After all these decades, this strikes me as one of the defining features of his personality: he saw earlier than others where the world was heading, and he had the courage to say so.

He had certainly convinced me. By the time I finished school, I wanted to study either electronics or mathematics, in both cases with cybernetics and computers firmly in mind. The vagaries of fate – or, more precisely, the decisions of the bureaucrats responsible for allocating scholarships – took me instead to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Timișoara.

I did not yet know that, in life, what initially seems a loss can often turn into a gain. At the Polytechnic in Timișoara, the mathematics professors already knew me through the Olympiads and Gazeta Matematică and selected me for the national student mathematics competitions, which I won in 1958 and 1959.

My professional direction had already been set: I wanted to work with computers.

Professor Moisil’s Charisma

Grigore C. Moisil possessed what today we would call charisma. Yet the word does not quite capture the effect he had on those around him.

With his unmistakable voice, he had an extraordinary power of persuasion and the rare ability to make complicated subjects accessible. Romania had no television when I first met him. After Romanian Television began broadcasting, around 1957, his television appearances became one of the most popular ways of introducing the public to what we would now call information technology. His weekly columns in Contemporanul served much the same purpose.

And he had something else: humour.

I remember that, at the celebratory dinner marking the end of a National Olympiad in 1957, he began by referring to “the bad habit of ruining diners’ appetites with long and boring speeches”.

I never forgot the remark. Many years later, during an official visit to China in 1984, our host delivered a 65-minute toast while the delights of Chinese cuisine waited untouched on the table. I remembered then just how right Professor Moisil had been.

His humour was not merely an embellishment to his speeches. It was a way of looking at the world, of puncturing conventions and, often, of expressing a truth more effectively than any solemn argument could.

Between Science, Aphorisms and Anecdotes

Grigore C. Moisil’s fame extended far beyond academic circles. He was one of the very few scientists to become a figure familiar to the wider public.

Even during his lifetime, numerous anecdotes circulated about him, along with a great many aphorisms and witty remarks. Some were certainly his; others were probably attributed to him. Repeated over the decades, they have made it difficult in some cases to distinguish historical fact from the legend that grew up around him.

Yet the very existence of that legend is significant.

Stories were told of his habit of appearing to sleep through the interminable meetings of the Romanian Academy. Moisil was credited with the remark: “You cannot say dreams do not come true. I once dreamt that I was at a meeting of the Academy, and when I woke up… that was exactly where I was!”

There were – and still are – stories about his encounters with academic bureaucracy, professors and students, research institutes and countless other situations in which his spontaneous wit transformed an ordinary incident into a memorable tale.

His aphorisms were equally characteristic. Moisil had the rare gift of condensing into a single sentence an observation about science, intelligence, stupidity, bureaucracy, professors, students or academic life. Behind the humour there was almost always a lucid insight into reality.

Not all these sayings can now be documented with certainty, and folklore has probably altered or multiplied them. But the phenomenon tells us something essential about Moisil the man: very few scientists enter not only a country’s collective memory, but also its folklore.

Grigore C. Moisil was one of them.

Moisil and the MECIPT Electronic Computer

I met him again a few years later in Timișoara, in connection with MECIPT-1, a first-generation electronic computer and the second such machine we built in Romania after CIFA-1.

It was then that I discovered another side of Moisil. He was no longer simply the professor who championed computers and cybernetics and encouraged young people to devote themselves to these new fields. I came to know him as a mentor of advanced research, initiating it and supporting it with all the energy at his command.

He visited MECIPT quite frequently. At first he came to see the computer; later he returned to support various projects and scientific contacts directly. Among others, he introduced Erika Domokos, who was developing a program for machine translation from English into Romanian. In 1962, in Timișoara and in Moisil’s presence, the first machine translation from English into Romanian was carried out.

Looking back from today’s world of artificial intelligence, we can appreciate just how advanced such work was in the early 1960s.

One of my favourite memories of Moisil comes from one of his first visits to the newly commissioned MECIPT-1. The computer was impressive: it contained around 2,000 electronic valves, visible on the front panel. Yet, seen from the outside, it appeared “dead”, because nothing moved.

Moisil remarked, with characteristic humour, that it lacked a “toy for academicians”.

Seeing our puzzled expressions, he explained that academicians were people who had done many good things in their lives, but tended to reach the Academy at an age when they did not always understand what was being explained to them.

“Put in some lights that switch on and off – a toy for academicians!” he told us.

We followed his suggestion. Within days, neon lamps had been fitted to the accumulator register, and the computer had “come to life”.

Behind the joke lay an interesting intuition: people need a visible sign that a machine is working. Computers have shrunk beyond recognition since then, while their power has increased to a degree that would have been almost unimaginable in the MECIPT years. Yet almost every electronic device still has, somewhere, a small LED that flashes to tell us something is happening inside.

I would call it “Moisil’s lamp”.

“The Young Man Has the Floor…”

As for the stories about Moisil sleeping during meetings, I had an opportunity to discover for myself how much truth lay behind the legend.

Around 1964, Professor Moisil learnt that my colleague Dan Farcaș and I, at MECIPT, were working in a new field – bionics. He invited us to present our results before a large audience in the Spiru Haret lecture theatre at the University of Bucharest.

He began by saying: “The young engineer Vasile Baltac from Timișoara has the floor and will speak to us about…” Then he sat down in the front row, directly in front of me, and… fell asleep almost immediately.

For a young speaker, the situation could hardly have been more discouraging. I was convinced I had failed to hold his attention. Nevertheless, I carried on.

The moment I finished, Moisil stood up, thanked me, gave the floor to “the young mathematician Dan Farcaș” and… promptly fell asleep again. I felt somewhat reassured. Perhaps he was simply very tired.

The surprise came at the end. Moisil stood up and gave a remarkably clear summary of what each of us had presented.

From that moment on, I was convinced that Professor Moisil did not really sleep during meetings. His apparent sleep was probably a highly individual form of concentration that somehow allowed him to absorb what the speakers were saying.

The story is amusing, but something far more important lies behind it: Moisil sought out young people, invited them to speak and gave them a platform. In the development of a new field, the ability to discover and encourage talented people can be every bit as important as one’s own scientific work.

An Ambassador for Electronic Computers in a Difficult Era

In the years that followed, I encountered Grigore C. Moisil fairly regularly at conferences and scientific meetings, at the Computing Centre of the University of Bucharest, where he invited us to exchange ideas with colleagues, and, after 1968, at the newly established Government Commission for the Provision of Computing Equipment.

Together with Vili Lowenfeld, I also visited him several times at his home in Armenească Street.

The image that has stayed with me is of a man who seemed to be present wherever the future of computing in Romania was being discussed. With his extraordinary powers of persuasion and ever-present humour, he championed electronic computers wherever he went.

Such a role is difficult to quantify through bibliographies or citation indices. The history of technology is not made up of inventions alone. It also depends on those who create the intellectual, institutional and political environment in which inventions can emerge, be understood and develop.

Moisil was one of those people.

International Recognition: Computer Pioneer

His death in 1973 left a void that, in my view, no other figure of comparable stature has since filled.

More than two decades later, I had the opportunity to contribute to an important international recognition of his role.

In 1995, as a member of the IEEE Computer Society and Romania’s representative on an IEEE ad hoc committee for Eastern Europe, I learnt that this prestigious organisation intended to confer its Computer Pioneer distinction on personalities from Eastern Europe and, exceptionally, would allow it to be awarded posthumously.

I nominated Grigore C. Moisil and, to my great delight, the nomination was accepted.

In May 1996, the distinction was presented to Mrs Viorica Moisil by the Executive Director of the IEEE Computer Society at a moving ceremony held at Elisabeta Palace. Moisil thus joined an international pantheon that included figures such as Aiken, Bell, Cray, Dijkstra and Moore.

For me, helping to secure this distinction was a tribute to a great Romanian scientist and man of culture.

But it also had a deeply personal meaning. Forty years after our first meeting, I was able to contribute to the international recognition of the man who, when I was a teenager, had spoken to me about computers and had played a decisive part in setting me on my professional path.

120 Years – and a Duty to Remember

In 2006, when Grigore C. Moisil would have turned 100, I was saddened to see his centenary pass almost unnoticed. A few commemorative meetings that attracted little attention in the media, a street in Bucharest and several informatics high schools bearing his name seemed far too little for someone who had done so much for Romania.

The contrast with the way John von Neumann’s centenary had been celebrated in Budapest in 2003 was striking. I was invited to events there that included a solemn session of the Hungarian Academy, with the President of the country as the principal guest.

On the 120th anniversary of Grigore C. Moisil’s birth, we still have an opportunity to put right this injustice of memory.

Today’s generations live in a world shaped by computers, the Internet, algorithms and artificial intelligence. It is difficult for them to imagine a time when determination and courage were required even to argue publicly that the future belonged to computers.

Moisil had that courage.

He also understood that building machines was not enough. People had to be educated to understand them; schools had to be created; research had to be encouraged; institutions had to be persuaded; and, above all, the curiosity of young people had to be awakened.

Perhaps this is one of his most important legacies.

For me, Grigore C. Moisil remains, above all, the providential figure I met in 1956, when he presented me with the prize for first place nationally in the Mathematics Olympiad.

Seventy years have passed since then.

Looking back, I realise how profoundly a young person can be influenced by an encounter with a great personality at the very moment when they are searching for their path. Moisil did not simply present me with a prize that day. Through what he told us about cybernetics and computers, he pointed me – before I fully understood it myself – towards the future.

Fate arranged that only a few years later I would meet him again in the very future he had described to us: beside the electronic computers at MECIPT, and later at conferences and in the institutions where Romanian computing was beginning to take shape.

On the 120th anniversary of his birth, and 70 years after my first meeting with him, this seems to me perhaps the aspect of Grigore C. Moisil’s legacy most worth remembering: his ability to see the future before others did, and his extraordinary generosity in encouraging young people to set out towards it.

Some people foresee the future. Others help to build it. Grigore C. Moisil did more: he shaped the people who would build it.

The Computer Pioneer Award was presented to Mrs Viorica Moisil by the Executive Director of the IEEE Computer Society at a moving ceremony held at Elisabeta Palace in May 1996. The photograph shows the author with Mrs Moisil, Solomon Marcus and other participants.