Clarification of Question by
panos-ga
on
12 May 2004 17:21 PDT
I attach biographical information:
John Amsden Starkweather was born on August 30, 1925, in Detroit,
Michigan. During World War II, he served in the U. S. Coast Guard and
attended the U. S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. He
obtained his A.B. degree in Art from Yale in 1950, and graduate
degrees from Northwestern University (M.A., Experimental Psychology,
1953; Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, 1955). During his Ph.D. candidacy,
he was an assistant research psychologist at the University of
California San Francisco campus, and a lecturer in psychology at
Northwestern. After obtaining his Ph.D., he returned to UCSF's
Department of Psychiatry to conduct courses in medical psychology,
first as an assistant professor (1955-1961), then associate professor
(1961-1966) and later as a full professor (1966-1992) and emeritus
professor (1992-). He also has lectured in pharmacology (1956-1962)
and in psychology at U. C. Berkeley (1957-1958).
Dr. Starkweather's teaching activities from 1955 through 1961 centered
primarily on clinical skills of diagnostic psychological testing and
interviewing. Referrals were also accepted for evaluative
consultations for faculty members and students in outpatient clinics
of Psychiatry, Medicine, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Obstetrics and
Gynecology, and inpatient wards of Neurology, Neurosurgery and
Medicine. Following a sabbatical leave in 1962, his emphasis of
teaching shifted from clinical skills toward consultation about data
analysis, research methods and computer usage, involving consultation
with faculty and staff, with postgraduate fellows, residents and
medical students. It was in this second field of interest that much of
Dr. Starkweather's later work took place. From 1965 to 1977 he was the
director of UCSF's Office of Information Systems and Computer Center,
and from 1967 to 1992 he was first a faculty member and later chairman
of the Graduate Group in Medical Information Science.
Notable among Dr. Starkweather's achievements during this period was
the development of two interactive computer programming languages,
initially designed for automated examinations and learning exercises:
COMPUTEST was developed in the early 1960s, and PILOT (Programmed
Inquiry, Learning Or Teaching) in the early 1970s. Of the two systems,
PILOT --designed for use on individual desktop microprocessor
equipment --has been the most successful. PILOT was chosen by the
National Library of Medicine as their primary computer language for
the dissemination and interchange of computer-based instructional
materials in the health sciences, and for the instruction of medical
librarians about how to search the MEDLINE data files; a more recent
version has been used to develop current instruction about access to
toxicology information.
