Preface

This book represents the ongoing documentation and storytelling of the Bland Ewing project, a narrative history and research compilation focusing on the life and work of Bland Ewing (1931–2006).

The content has been transformed from historical transcripts and notes to record the multi-faceted journey from JPL’s early satellite programs to the frontiers of mathematical ecology at UC campuses and Silicon Valley innovation in the early days of the microcomputer revolution.

I met Bland at UC-Berkeley in 1971, working there summers while I was an undergraduate at Caltech. After graduating, I took a year of travel, funded by the Watson Foundation, followed by graduate school at UC-Berkeley in biostatistics. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 1982 to take a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I lost track of Bland while in my graduate program, and only reconnected with him in 1996 after learning that he was quite ill. He was living in Paradise, CA, in an apartment next to his sister, in the serious stages of Huntington’s Disease. During the next ten years, I visited Bland many times, and we had many long conversations about his life and work, which I taped on cassettes and had transcribed. These are the basis for much of this book.

Bland was very much a scientist, and one of the smartest people I have ever known. Part of his scientific thinking is embedded in this book, but other parts are separate. For more on that, see my evolving compilation at Systems Ethology–The Life and Work of Bland Ewing.

This is a work in progress that has spanned decades, with long gaps while I pursued my own career and life. While the first parts have been curated, the later sections have missing words signfied by underscores (__) where the transcripts were unclear due to the effects of Huntington’s Disease.

Structure of the Book

The book is organized into thematic chapters covering Bland’s personal history, his mentors at Caltech, his scientific contributions in aerospace, ecology, and his later years in Silicon Valley. Interspersed are present-time (during taping) reflections and comments. The book is largely a dialog between myself and Bland, with others along the way. Paragraphs begin with a symbol for the speak (none for Bland), with me an asterisk (*), Jim (+), Carmen (C), Dave (+).

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to all participants and researchers involved in the project. Of particular note was Bland’s sister, Carmen Corson, who lived next door to him in Paradise, CA. Carmen and I had many wonderful conversations about life and family. I remember one time I brought blackberries from the Central Valley, which she turned into scrumptious muffins.

A couple mutual friends/colleagues joined me on occasion. Jim Barbieri came up to Paradise several times. Jim, Bland and I carried on a three-way telephone conversation for several years, which I though of as our “Tuesdays with Bland” sessions (noting the parallels with Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie”). Dave Baasch had a memorable visit to Paradise as well.

Others talked to me by phone over the years, filling in gaps. At one point, I reached out to JPL and got a recorded interview from JPL ArchivistJohn Bluth, plus a call back from Bill Pickering, Director of JPL during the Explorer program.

Brian Yandell, April 2026