Jerome Coonen

Jerome Toby Coonen (born October 1953) is a mathematican who was an early employee of Apple Computer.

Education[]

Coonen received a B.S. and M.S in mathematics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982.^[1] During his studies at Berkeley, Coonen worked with his professor William Kahan to develop a floating-point arithmetic standard for microprocessors, which became known as IEEE 754.^[2]

Career[]

Apple Computer[]

Upon graduating in June 1982, Coonen joined Apple Computer where he became a software engineering manager. His work on floating point arithmetic was applied towards what became the Macintosh 128K and was the foundation of the Standard Apple Numerics Environment (SANE) for the Motorola 68000. He also conducted code reviews of the ROM and Macintosh system software.^[1]^[2]

After the launch of the Macintosh, Coonen led development of the expanded ROM of the Macintosh Plus and worked with Adobe to improve the speed of PostScript and LaserWriter software. He then proceeded to manage software development of the Macintosh II. He later served as the first software engineering manager of the Newton platform.^[2]

After Apple[]

After leaving Apple in April 1992, Coonen consulted for various companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Metrowerks, Microsoft, Taligent, and Apple, largely on projects related to floating-point arithmetic. In January 2000, Coonen founded Xetus Mortgage Corporation to develop a paperless system to automate the origination of home mortgages. In September 2011, he joined Trimble Navigation, where he served in engineering and product management roles. Since October 2017, Coonen has served as a director of the Arithmazium museum of computer arithmetic.

References[]

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Jerome Coonen, LinkedIn. Accessed 2022-06-01.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point by Charles Severance with William Kahan, University of California, Berkeley EECS. 1998-02-20.

External links[]

Jerome Toby Coonen at the Association for Computing Machinery
Jerome Coonen at Facebook
Jerome Coonen at Folklore
Jerome Coonen at GitHub
Jerome Toby Coonen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Jerome Coonen at ResearchGate

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[li-jcoonen-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Jerome Coonen, LinkedIn. Accessed 2022-06-01.

[eecs-floating-point-2] 2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point by Charles Severance with William Kahan, University of California, Berkeley EECS. 1998-02-20.

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