Conceiver of the first read-only memory and developer of the selectively addressable storage tube, Rajchman was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. Although he was born in London, he received the Diploma of Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1935, and became a Doctor of Science in 1938. He emigrated to America in 1935 and joined RCA Laboratory directed by Vladimir K. Zworykin in January 1936.
Rajchman was a prolific inventor with 107 US patents among others logic circuits for arithmetic. He conceived the first read-only memory, which was widely used in early computers. He conceived and developed the selectively addressable storage tube, the ill-fated Selectron tube, and the core memory.
He was a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Rajchman was also a member of Sigma Xi, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Physical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Franklin Institute.
He received the 1960 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award and the 1974 IEEE Edison Medal for a "creative career in the development of electronic devices and for pioneering work in computer memory systems."
