Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.1.
gordon Pask in the early 1960s. (reproduced by permission of amanda
heitler.)
importer and exporter, and his wife Mary, and died in London on 28 March
1996, at the age of sixty-seven.
1
Gordon, as he was known, was much the
youngest of three brothers. His brother Alfred, who trained as an engineer
but became a Methodist minister, was twenty years older. The other brother,
Edgar, was sixteen years older and was Gordon's “hero and role model” (E.
Pask n.d., n.p.), and it is illuminating to note that Gar, as he was known,
distinguished himself by bravery in research verging on utter recklessness in
World War II. He left his position as an anesthetist at Oxford University to join
the Royal Air Force in 1941 and then carried out a series of life-threatening
experiments on himself aimed at increasing the survival rate of pilots: being
thrown unconscious repeatedly into swimming pools to test the characteris-
tics of life jackets; again being thrown repeatedly, but this time conscious, into
the icy waters off the Shetlands to test survival suits; hanging from a parachute
