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breathing less and less oxygen until he became unconscious, to determine at
what altitude pilots stood a chance if they bailed out; being anesthetized
again and again to the point at which his breathing stopped, to explore the
efficacy of different modes of resuscitation. He “won the distinction of being
the only man to have carried out all [well, almost all] of his research while
asleep,” and the Pask Award of the British Association of Anaesthetists for
gallantry and distinguished service was instituted in his honor in 1975 (Pain
2002). Gar was a hard act for young Gordon to follow, but he did so, in his own
unusual way.
2
Gordon was educated at Rydal, a private school in Wales, where he also
took a course in geology at Bangor University. He was called up for military
service in 1945, but “Gordon's career in the RAF was extremely brief. During
his first week at camp, he passed out while doing the mandatory session of
push-ups, and was returned home in an ambulance” (E. Pask n.d., n.p.). Pask
then studied mining engineering at Liverpool Polytechnic, before taking up
a place at Downing College, Cambridge, in 1949, where he studied medicine
and gained a BA in physiology in the natural science tripos in 1953 (Pask 1959,
878). In 1956, he married Elizabeth Poole (E. Pask [1993] describes their un-
conventional courtship), and they had two daughters: Amanda (1961) and
Hermione (adopted in 1967). In 1964, Pask was awarded a PhD in psychology
from University College London and in 1974 a DSc in cybernetics by the Open
University. In 1995, the year before his death, Cambridge awarded him an ScD
(Scott and Glanville 2001; Glanville and Scott 2001b).
His irst topic,
An Approach to Cybernetics
, was published in 1961 and was
translated into Dutch and Portuguese, and several other topics followed (Pask
1975a, 1975b, and 1976a were the major ones; also Pask and Curran 1982; and
Calculator Saturnalia
[Pask, Glanville, and Robinson 1980]—a compendium
of games to play on electronic calculators). A list of his publications (journal
articles, chapters in topics and proceedings, technical reports) runs to more
than 250 items (in Glanville 1993, 219-33). At different times he was presi-
dent of the Cybernetics Society and the International Society for General Sys-
tems; he was the first recipient of the
Ehrenmitgleid
of the Austrian Society for
Cybernetic Studies and was awarded the Wiener Gold Medal by the American
Society for Cybernetics.
From the 1950s onward, Pask enjoyed many university affiliations, includ-
ing professorial chairs at Brunel University (in the Cybernetics Department,
part-time, beginning in 1968) and the University of Amsterdam (in the Centre
for Innovation and Co-operative Technology, beginning in 1987; Thomas and
Harri-Augstein 1993, 183; de Zeeuw 1993, 202).
3
He also from time to time
