Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart (born January 30, 1925 in Oregon) is an American inventor of Norwegian descent. He is best known for inventing the computer mouse (in a joint effort with Bill English); as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help cope with the world's increasingly more urgent and complex problems (which Horst W. J. Rittel and others since have called wicked problems).

Education

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Engelbart received a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1948, a B.Eng. from UC Berkeley in 1952 ^*, and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in EECS in 1955. While at Oregon State, he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon social fraternity.

As a World War II naval radio technician based in the Philippines, Engelbart was inspired by Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think". After the war, Engelbart studied at UC Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1955. He spent over a year trying to create an unsuccessful startup, Digital Techniques, to commercialize some of his doctorate research into storage devices, then was hired to work in magnetic logic devices at the Stanford Research Institute, now headquartered in Menlo Park, while the organization was still affiliated with Stanford University.

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