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Memorial Tributes Volume 23 (2021) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

JAMES U. LEMKE
Pages 180-185

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From page 181...
... After blowing the eyebrows off his 4th grade teacher in Princeton, Illinois, with homemade gunpowder (not inten tionally, it was the teacher's fault) , he went on to graduate from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a bachelor of science degree in 1959 and the following year got his master of science degree, both in physics, from Northwestern University, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
From page 182...
... His industrial career began in 1948, when at the age of 19 he joined the new IBM Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, where he spent 3 years working on plated drum memories for IBM computers. He then worked at TEMCO on high-speed teletype encryption devices before moving to AV Manufacturing Company in New York as vice president of engineering, developing multi­ track instrumentation recorders.
From page 183...
... He initially was searching for a lightweight, high-power-density engine that could serve as a backup for a primary power airplane engine if it failed -- he had personally experienced three such failures in his planes. While on a beach vacation reading The Internal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice by Charles Fayette Taylor, considered the "internal combustion engine bible" by many, he learned about the Junkers Jumo opposed-piston diesel aircraft engine that set records for fuel efficiency in the days preceding World War II.
From page 184...
... This engine project was funded in part by ARPA-E, the advanced development arm of the US Department of Energy, and the technology is being marketed to a number of global OEMs. Even after leaving an active management role at Achates, Jim's intellectual curiosity and investigations into other engineering opportunities continued.
From page 185...
... In addition to solving partial differential equations and piloting airplanes, he loved classical music, a good martini, jokes, one-liners, and hearing, telling, and writing limericks. One of his favorite sayings was that "one should never argue with others about politics, religion, or antenna design," which usually left the listener a bit dumbfounded.


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