In Memory of Charles Richard Dickens

On July 15, Janet Dixon shared the message with friends and family that her husband Charles Richard Dickens, known as "Chuck" by people at SLAC, had passed away peacefully on July 14, 2018, at the age of 84.

"There was not any one condition that caused his death," she wrote. "It was more just a case of good living and old age."

Chuck was a first-generation American, born in Alameda, California, to parents who came from England.

He started work at SLAC with the Computation Group in 1966, before the lab's construction was completed. In 1969 he was appointed director of the SLAC Computation Center and then, upon the recommendation of a special search committee headed by Professor Edward McClusky of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Chuck was appointed as director of the Stanford Computation Center in 1971. He continued to lead SLAC's computer facility, taking on the responsibility for establishing general policies and long-range planning of the lab's computing needs. By 1980, he had turned his focus solely on SLAC, heading our Scientific Computing Services until his retirement. During his leadership, he oversaw huge advancements in the field of computing, including the introduction of several generations of IBM mainframes and operating systems, and the move from batch-only computing with teams of operators managing tapes, printers, card readers and consoles 24/7, to "lights-out operation" with interactive terminals, networking, the World Wide Web, Unix, and personal computers.

One of his favorite quotes was from a book by Jerome Friedman on data mining and statistics, which said: "Every time computing power increases by a factor of ten, we should totally rethink how and what we compute."

He retired in 1996 after three decades at SLAC, prompting a nationwide search for his replacement, but would return to celebrate milestone events like the 1998 shutdown party for SLAC's 17-year-old IBM Virtual Machine system or, most recently, my own retirement earlier this year.

Chuck was a great leader, setting the vision for the group and providing opportunities, resources, and encouragement to his people. He was also compassionate and understanding. Ken Martell once said, "My coolest recollection of Chuck is when we (I was a computer operator in the union) went on strike around 1973. We were blocking the intersection of Palm and Galvez on [Stanford] campus and I saw Chuck walking towards us. I thought, Oh [expletive], here goes my job! Instead, he handed out PB&J sandwiches to us. He said we looked kind of hungry standing in the hot street."

He will be missed.

Memorial Service (UPDATED): A Celebration of Chuck’ s life will be held at St. Augustine of Canterbury church on Saturday, September 29 at 2 p.m. 1800 Wildcat Blvd., Rocklin, CA with Pastor Liz Armstrong officiating. Memorial donations to Chuck’s memory can be made to the Tam Alumni Association, PO Box 992, San Ramon, CA 94583.