Terence Sanger
Image:
More In This Article
-
Overview
Where Are They Now Series
FINALIST YEAR: 1981
HIS FINALIST PROJECT: Writing a new computer language
Terence Sanger, a student at The Dalton School in New York City who was fascinated by this new technology, decided to write a computer language that would have some of the flexibility of APL but could run on microcomputers, particularly the SOL. He called it "S". "S didn't stand for anything," he says, but there was a language called "B" around that time (whose successor was "C," a language people still use). He thought that "calling things by a single letter might be an interesting-sounding thing to do." He wrote a few games, including a version of Mastermind, submitted them to the 1981 Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and was named a finalist.
THE EFFECT ON HIS CAREER: Sanger went to Harvard to study computer science and applied mathematics, and began working in the Harvard Robotics Laboratory shortly after it was founded in 1983. He did a research project on computer stereo vision (that is, depth perception). In the lab, he saw that there were three potential applications for robots: military, industrial and medical. Of the three, medicine interested him most.
To see whether he'd enjoy going into medicine, he spent time observing an ear, nose and throat surgeon. Sanger was intrigued by the operating room technology. He wasn't sure he'd enjoy the more human aspects of medicine, though. In particular, "I always assumed that I would dislike working with children," Sanger says. After spending a postgrad year taking med school prerequirements, and then enrolling in Harvard Medical School, he did his pediatrics rotation early to get it over with.
But then, he had a revelation: Unlike adults who tend to find illness depressing, "a child with a disease is still playful," he says. Assigned to do daily belly measurements of a four-year-old boy with liver disease, he'd talk and laugh with him. He started to fret about his charges during the days he was gone. "My girlfriend at the time—now my wife—told me that she had never seen me be more protective of my patients," he says. Sanger decided to study pediatric neurology, because "I just fell in love with the kids."
See what we're tweeting about
Comments
Add Comment