Glenn E. Tisdale ’45

Glenn died Feb. 27, 2021. He grew up in Wilmington, Del., and attended the Tower Hill School, where he played football, baseball, and worked in publications.

At Princeton he was in the orchestra, band, and the Gateway Club. When World War II started he joined the Navy V-12 program and was transferred to Yale. He completed an expedited bachelor’s in engineering and was shipped to the Mariana Islands with the Civil Engineer Corps (Seabees). He was construction officer (lieutenant junior grade) in the 107th NCB Seabees in the Marianas, Tinian, and Guam. In Guam he helped run the power station.

After the war Glenn earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at Yale, and married Patricia Peake. For three decades he developed electronic systems for military aerospace. He was a pioneer of information technology at Westinghouse Electronic Systems (now Northrop Grumman) and developed some of the earliest image-processing algorithms.

He loved biology. He saw reflections, in biological systems, of the algorithms that he had been developing for artificial intelligence. He was an accomplished pianist and painter. 

Glenn is survived by Patricia and children Glenn Jr. and Lisa.