Thomas J. Watson Research Center

The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division.

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The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York 45 miles north of New York City, two buildings in Hawthorne, New York, and one building in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Related Topics:
Yorktown Heights, New York - Hawthorne, New York - Cambridge, Massachusetts

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The research center is named for both Thomas J. Watson Sr and Thomas J. Watson Jr, who led IBM as president and CEO respectively from 1915 (when it was known as CTR) to 1971.

Related Topics:
Thomas J. Watson Sr - Thomas J. Watson Jr - 1915 - 1971

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The research is intended to improve hardware (physical sciences and semiconductors research), software (security, programming, mathematics and speech recognition), and services.

Related Topics:
Hardware - Software

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The center was founded at Columbia University in 1945 as the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, on 116th Street in New York, expanding to 115th Street in 1953. The headquarters were moved to Yorktown Heights in 1957, with a new lab designed by architect Eero Saarinen completed in 1961, with the 115th Street site closing in 1970. IBM later donated the New York City buildings to Columbia; they are now known as the Casa Hispanica and Watson Hall. The lab expanded to Hawthorne in 1984.

Related Topics:
Columbia University - 1945 - 1953 - Eero Saarinen

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Notable staff include the mathematicians Benoît Mandelbrot and Gregory Chaitin.

Related Topics:
Benoît Mandelbrot - Gregory Chaitin

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