Harold Pender was an American academic, author, and inventor. He was the first Dean of the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

's Moore School of Electrical Engineering

Moore School of Electrical Engineering

The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne Building...

, a position he held from the founding of the School in 1923 until his retirement in 1949. During his tenure the Moore School built the ENIAC

ENIAC

ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....

, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, and began construction on its successor machine, the EDVAC

EDVAC

EDVAC was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program computer....

. Pender also proposed the Moore School Lectures

Moore School Lectures

Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering between July 8, 1946 and August 30, 1946, and was the first time any computer topics had...

, the first course in computers, which the Moore School offered by invitation in Summer 1946.

The Harold Pender Award

Harold Pender Award

The Harold Pender Award, initiated in 1972 and named after founding Dean Harold Pender, is given by the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of the University of Pennsylvania to an outstanding member of the engineering profession who has achieved distinction by significant...

is named after him.