Doomed Engineers

Main List

A subject of morbid but peculiar fascination. It’s certainly unwholesome to relish the stories of those who are like us, and perhaps greater than us, but who come to spectacularly bad ends, yet such stories provide a certain satisfaction. As we make our way through our own careers in engineering, and deal with our own inevitable failures, there’s some comfort in knowing that no matter how badly we screw up, we won’t get killed for it. Unlike these guys.

So here’s a list of the tragic and failed from newest to oldest. Most were brought down by their own characters, some by bad luck or malice. Biographies and pictures (when completed!) lie behind the links.

Name	Dates	Known For	Demise
Jerold Haas	1975 – 2018	Applying blockchain to education payment and credit management	Lost his fragile sanity under startup stress and had a fatal accident while hiding out in the woods (story in Wired)
Tim Spitler	1948 – 2012	Selling the secret of making titanium dioxide to the Chinese	Suicide after partner was arrested
Eugene Armstrong	d 2004	GCSC civil engineer	Beheaded in Iraq
Satyendra Dubey	d 2003	Indian highway project manager	Rubbed out by mafioso contractors after revealing corruption
Ayman ?	d 2002	Syrian inventor of a binary form of the nerve gas sarin	Executed when his CIA contacts were discovered (story in the Washington Post)
Gary Howland	d 2002	Internet cryptography	Heroin overdose
Janis Jagars	d 2002	OpenPGP, Mixmaster	Fall from Lobuche mountain, Nepal
Gene Kan	1977-2002	Gnutella portal, InfraSearch	Suicide by gunshot
Phil Katz	1963-2000	PC compression utility PKzip	Suicide by alcoholism
Bohumil Sole	1934-1997	Co-inventor of Semtex	Blew himself up with it while depressed
Yahya Ayyash	1966-1996	Palestinian bomb maker	A booby-trapped cellphone
Frederick Cuny	1944-1995	International relief expert	Executed in Chechnya
Gerald Bull	1928-1990	Designer of Iraqi supergun	Assassinated in Belgium
Mickey Thompson	1928-1988	Dragsters and speed records	Mob hit by vengeful business partner
Don Aronow	1927-1987	Designer of Cigarette and other high-speed boats	Murdered by drug-smuggler associate
Benjamin Linder	1962-1987	Hydroelectric projects in Nicaragua	Killed in Contra raid
Dennis Barnhart	? – 1983	Founder of PC-clone maker Eagle Computer	Ferrari through the guard rail after a celebratory lunch on the day of his IPO
Peter Goldmark	1906-1977	33 RPM records, 1st color TV	Car accident
Henry Smolinski and Hal Blake	d 1973	Winged automobiles	A suddenly wingless automobile
Mitrofan Nedelin	d 1960	Headed Soviet launches at Baikonur	Excessive devotion to schedule
Edwin Armstrong	1890-1954	Invented most of radio	Bankruptcy, suicide
Alan Turing	1912-1954	Undecidability, Enigma code-breaking, early computers	Suicide (or possibly an accident) by cyanide after medical treatment for homosexuality
John Whiteside Parsons	1914-1952	Early work on rocket fuels, Satanist follower of Aleister Crowley	Killed in a mysterious explosion in his house
James B. Lansing	1904-1949	Early work on loudspeakers (JBL/Altec)	Suicide while depressed, aggravated by losing company
Thomas Midgley	1889-1944	Leaded gasoline, CFCs	Paralyzed by polio, then strangled by a harness while getting out of bed
Walter Thiel	?-1941	Designed the V-2 rocket engine	Personal attention from the RAF: a direct hit on his Peenemunde bomb shelter
Wallace Carothers	1896-1937	Inventor of nylon	Depression, suicide
Alberto Santos-Dumont	1873-1932	First European powered flight	Suicide over military use of aircraft
Peter Palchinsky	1875-1929	Leading Russian mining engineer	Executed by Stalin
Clara Haber	1870-1915	Contributor to Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation	Suicide when her husband invented poison gas
Rudolf Diesel	1858-1913	The eponymous engine	Suicide after loss of control over technology
Thomas Andrews	1873-1912	Designer of the Titanic	Drowned after collision with iceberg
Charles O’Connor	1843-1902	Western Australia water supply	Suicide after constant criticism
Otto Lilienthal	1848-1896	Early man-carrying gliders	Crashed in thermal
Sir Thomas Bouch	1822-1880	Victorian railway engineer	Disgrace after death of 75 people in the collapse of his Tay Bridge
Horace L Hunley	d 1863	Financier of the Confederate submarine, HL Hunley	Drowned during sea trials in Charleston SC
Horace Wells	1815-1848	First use of nitrous oxide as pain reliever	Disbelief, chloroform addiction, suicide
Archimedes	~287-212 BCE	Volume of the sphere, principles of buoyancy and leverage	Dissed a Roman soldier

And let me mention one other figure, a particularly important one in my field. He wasn’t doomed, and in fact had a spectacular career, but he did come to an untimely end:

Seymour Cray

1925-1996

Leading supercomputer designer

Killed in an SUV rollover

---