of the first two recipients of the Japan Prize "for outstanding achievement in the field of electronics and communications technologies". Personal life Besides his technical books, Pierce wrote science fiction using the pseudonym J.J. Coupling, which refers to the total angular momenta of individual particles. John Pierce also had an early interest in gliding and assisted the development of the Long Beach Glider Club in Los Angeles, one of the earliest glider societies in the United States. According to Richard Hamming "you couldn't talk to John Pierce without being stimulated very quickly". Pierce had been a resident of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Pasadena, California, and later of Palo Alto, California. During his later years, as a Visiting Professor at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, he and his wife Brenda were known for having dinner parties in their Palo Alto home, in which they would invite an eclectic variety of guests and have lively discussions concerning topics ranging from space exploration to politics, health care, and 20th-century music. One such dinner party was reported in This Is Your Brain On Music, written by Pierce's former student Daniel Levitin. The papers of John R. Pierce are at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. At his death Pierce was survived by his wife Brenda; a son—science fiction editor John Jeremy Pierce—and a daughter, Elizabeth Anne Pierce. See also ALPAC report References Sources The National Academies Press External links IEEE Global History Network biography Creative Thinking by J. R. Pierce, December 1951 "Machine Hearing and the Legacy of John R. Pierce" – video of a talk at Caltech's EE Centennial celebration 1910 births 2002 deaths American science fiction writers California Institute of Technology alumni American electrical engineers National Medal of Science laureates Novelists from Iowa Gliding in the United States IEEE Medal of Honor recipients IEEE Edison Medal recipients Scientists at Bell Labs People from Berkeley Heights, New Jersey Draper Prize winners American male short story writers American male novelists 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American male writers Engineers from New Jersey 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors Valdemar Poulsen Gold Medal recipients Members of the American Philosophical Society Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society