Myron T. Tribus (October 30, 1921 – August 31, 2016) was an American organizational theorist, who was the director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT from 1974 to 1986. He was known as leading supporter and interpreter of W. Edwards Deming, for popularizing the Bayesian methods, and for coining the term "thermoeconomics".[1]
Tribus was a captain in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, and worked as a design-development officer at Wright Field. While in the Air Force, he developed thermal ice protection equipment for aircraft.[1][4]
He joined General Electric in 1949 and became a gas turbine design engineer, but was unhappy in industry. He returned to academia, joining the faculty of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. He was a visiting assistant professor of chemical engineering and director of icing research at the University of Michigan between 1952 and 1954.[1][2][4][5] While at UCLA, he hosted Threshold, an hour long television program dealing with science and its impact on society. It aired on CBS in 1958.[2]
In 1961, he was named dean of Thayer School of EngineeringatDartmouth College,[4] where he led the faculty in developing a new curriculum based on engineering design and entrepreneurship. He believed that hands-on engineering design was essential at all levels of the curriculum, saying, "Knowledge without know-how is sterile."[6] He remained in the role until 1969.[6]
In 1969, Tribus accepted a political appointee post in the Richard M. Nixon administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology.[1][7] On November 23, 1970, he left the Department of Commerce after 18 months to become Senior Vice President for Research & Engineering in Xerox Corp.[1][8] From 1974 to 1986, Tribus directed the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] During his tenure, the Center published W. Edwards Deming's groundbreaking book, Out of the Crisis.[2] He helped expand the Center's Video Course Program, a precursor of MIT Professional Education. He also helped to increase enrollment in the Center's Advanced Study Program.[3]
Tribus was a co-founder of Exergy Inc., a company specializing in the design of advanced, high-efficiency power production systems. In his later years, he focused on the theory of structural cognitive modifiability of Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist.[1]
Tribus was a leading supporter and interpreter of W. Edwards Deming. He is also known in the 1970s for an insightful book entitled Rational Descriptions, Decisions and Designs, which popularized Bayesian methods with examples. In the 1960s, Tribus coined the term "thermoeconomics".[3]
"If you try to improve the performance of a system of people, machines, and procedures by setting numerical goals for the improvement of individual parts of the system, the system will defeat your efforts and you will pay a price where you least expect it.".[9]
This idea was close to a quotation by Paul Valéry about the spontaneous creation of counter-measures defeating measures,[10]
It was reformulated by Stephen Covey as, "Whoever tries to manage his business only looking at figures will soon not have anymore the figures nor the business."[11]
Elected member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1973, under Special Fields & Interdisciplinary Engineering, for his contributions to applied sciences that support engineering, to engineering education, and for professional service in education, government, and industry.[1][3]
Tribus published two books; Thermostatics and Thermodynamics, the first textbook basing the laws of thermodynamics on information theory rather than on the classical arguments, and Rational Descriptions, Decisions, and Designs, introducing Bayesian Decision methods into the engineering design process.
Tribus, Myron (1961). Thermodynamics and Thermostatics: An Introduction to Energy, Information and States of Matter, with Engineering Applications. D. Van Nostrand Company Inc.
Tribus, Myron (1969). Rational Descriptions, Decisions and Designs. Pergamon Press Inc. 1969. Reprint 478pp, 1999 at EXPIRA Press, Stockholm. Still available.
Tribus, Myron (1992). Quality first: Selected papers on quality and productivity improvement. National Society of Professional Engineers; 4th ed edition.
Tribus, Myron (1992). The Germ theory of management. SPC Press'.
He also published Goals and Gaols, a short work in which he illustrated with many historic examples how premature specialization may push students to a dead end, given the fast obsolescence of techniques.
Tribus, Myron (1967). Goals and Gaols, Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 57, p. 282.
^Myron Tribus, Quality First, Washington, D.C.: National Society of Professional Engineers (#1459), 1992
^"je constate que le contrôle, en toute matière, aboutit à vicier l’action, à la pervertir... Je vous l’ai déjà dit : dès qu’une action est soumise à un contrôle, le but profond de celui qui agit n’est plus l’action même, mais il conçoit d’abord la prévision du contrôle, la mise en échec des moyens de contrôle. Le contrôle des études n’est qu’un cas particulier et une démonstration éclatante de cette observation très générale". - Paul Valéry, Le bilan de l'intelligence (1935), in Variété, Œuvres, t. 1, Gallimard, Pléiade, p. 1076.
^Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly-effective People.
^Myron Tribus, 1961, Thermodynamics and Thermostatics: An Introduction to Energy, Information and States of Matter, with Engineering Applications, Back dust cover, D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 24 West 40 Street, New York 18, New York, U.S.A.
^Gokhale, D. V. (1980). "Review of The Maximum Entropy Formalism, edited by Raphael D. Levine and Myron Tribus". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 55 (1): 111. doi:10.1086/411728. ISSN0033-5770.
United States
