George Goble passed away - cctalk

3 Apr 2026

George Goble  passed away
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/wlfi/name/george-goble-obituary?id=611…
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble
George Harry Goble (December 11, 1952 – March 18, 2026) was an
American scientist and academic, who was a staff member at the Purdue
University Engineering Computer Network and a 1996 Ig Nobel Prize
winner.
Goble was commonly known as ghg, since he used that as a login id and
signature in digital communications from the 1970s. He received his BS
in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University.
In 1981, he wired together the backplanes of two DEC VAX-11/780
systems and made the first multi-CPU Unix computer, preceding DEC's
dual processor VAX-11/782.[1] The operating system was based on the
4.1 BSD kernel,[1]: 293  and the modifications thus eventually made it
into the 4.3 BSD Unix release.[citation needed] At the beginning of
the 4.3 BSD user manuals, Bill Joy wrote a special note of thanks to
GHG for being courageous enough to put the multi-CPU kernel into a
production environment before anyone else did.[2] (However, the
frequent crashes for a while inspired the writing of many humorous
text files by the Purdue University Electrical Engineering student
body, such as "The VAX had a Blowout", to be sung to the tune of
"London Bridge is Falling Down".) The development of the Dual-CPU Unix
system was the subject of Goble's Master's thesis.
Around this time, Goble, along with Bill Croft, also developed a
networking protocol for Unix, referred to as pnet, which was used at
Purdue at the time before being displaced by TCP/IP. Pnet allowed
remote logins, and remote execution of commands, among other
capabilities.[3]
In the late 1980s, Goble started experimenting with refrigerants, due
to increased danger and lower thermodynamic efficiency of the recently
introduced R-134a compared to the older R-12 which was being phased
out due to concerns about damage to the ozone layer, and the
incompatibility of R-134a with the lubricating oil and other materials
used in systems built for R-12. In 1987, he converted the beverage
refrigerators in the Eta Kappa Nu lounge in the basement of the Purdue
Electrical Engineering building to using a refrigerant of his own
devising. This refrigerant is now recognized as R-406A by ASHRAE and
is available commercially under the trade name AutoFrost. He later
developed another refrigerant which is compatible with R134A
lubricants, but which is superior in thermodynamic efficiency and
lower system internal pressures called GHG-X8.
In 1996, Goble was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for
preparing a barbecue for cooking in less than 5 seconds by the use of
a smoldering cigarette, charcoal and LOX (liquid oxygen).[4] This act
attracted the attention of the West Lafayette, Indiana fire
department, which warned him to never let them catch him in the
possession of LOX near a barbecue fire ever again.
Goble was also noted for driving a vehicle with the Indiana license
plate UNIX, and also GHG-1
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECE/Alums/OECE/2022/George-Goble