James Griesmer

James Griesmer, husband, father, grandfather, mathematician and research scientist at IBM, died on Tuesday, December 20, 2011, in Decatur, Georgia. He was 82. Jim was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on December 18, 1929. His family relocated to Detroit, where he attended St. David's grade school and De La Salle Collegiate.
Jim earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Notre Dame, graduating maxima cum laude. After college, he served in the Navy on the USS New Jersey and the USS Mindoro during the Korean War. He then returned to school to earn his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Mathematics, specializing in game theory.
In 1956, Jim married his first wife, Margaret Scully, and moved to Ossining, New York, to start his 35-year career with IBM as a mathematician and computer scientist. In 1960, while painting his basement floor, he had a "eureka moment" with his paper, "A bound for error-correcting codes," in which he defined the "Griesmer bound," a limit on the length of binary codes in which errors can be detected and corrected, with application to computer science, information theory, and communications. During Jim's career at IBM, he led work in game theory, low-temperature circuitry, symbolic computation and computer algebra, technical education, and expert systems. He also taught mathematics and computer science at University of California at Berkeley, Fairfield University, and IONA college.
In 1983, Jim met his wife Kathleen O'Connor, at a "tie party" where he sported a lengthy tie labeled with the digits of π. They married in 1984, enjoyed life filled with books, culture, the arts, and traveled extensively to Belgium, Canada, China, England, Germany, Guatemala, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, and Thailand on job-related speaking engagements and vacations. In 1994, they moved to Decatur, GA, with Kathleen's appointment to the faculty at Columbia Theological Seminary as a Professor of Old Testament.
Jim had a lifelong love of reading that he passed on to his children and grandchildren with a gift of a special book each Christmas. In retirement, he attended Emory Senior University for 15 years. He was on the board of ABLE (Atlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment), working for improvements in schools, infrastructure, housing, and conditions for day laborers in the Atlanta area.
During the final twenty years of his life, Jim struggled with a degenerative medical condition, peripheral motor neuropathy. Despite his physical impairment, he continued his commitment to family and friends, his love of learning, and joy in life. He also used his illness to contribute to a support group for people with peripheral neuropathy.
He is survived by his wife of 27 years, Kathleen O'Connor; a brother, Don of Germantown, Tennessee; a sister, Ruth Koerber of Dearborn, Michigan; and four children and their spouses, Stephen and Lynn of Westfield, New Jersey; Gretchen and Rick McHenry of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania; Martin and Mimi of Arlington, Massachusetts; and Romie and Ron Katcher of Media, Pennsylvania as well as 10 grandchildren: Peter, Maggie, Liz, Sadie, Chrissy, Hunter, Dillon, Julia, Noah, and James.
A funeral Mass will be held at Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church, 25 Boulevard NE, Atlanta, at 11:00 o'clock on Friday, January 6, 2012. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his memory to Bread for the World, National Public Radio, or the Neuropathy Association.


Funeral Home:
A. S. Turner & Sons
2773 North Decatur Road
Decatur, GA
30033