David Dibner, 1927-2005

The history of technology lost a good friend and significant benefactor on 28 September 2005, when David Dibner succumbed to a sudden and unexpected heart attack. He was seventy-eight years old. An engineer and businessman, David had headed the Dibner Fund and the Burndy Library since 1989 and supported the Dibner Institute from its creation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 until his death. With his wife Frances, also a board member of the Dibner Fund, David promoted a wide range of philanthropic interests, nurtured his own fascination with the artifacts of modern technology, and added significantly to the rare books, manuscripts, incunabula, and objects collected in the Burndy Library, more than doubling the number of volumes in the collection.

In many of these activities, David stewarded the legacy of his father, Bern Dibner. Born in 1897 in what is now Ukraine, Bern Dibner emigrated with his family to the United States, settled in New York City, and graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of New York in 1921 with a degree in electrical engineering. He founded the Burndy Engineering Company (later Burndy Corporation) in 1924 to manufacture electrical connectors. The success of the company, based in large measure on Bern's twenty-four patents, allowed him to launch his philanthropic enterprise and indulge a lifelong fascination with the history of science and technology. He founded the Dibner Fund in 1957 as a private family foundation to support the history of science and a wide range of other programs, ranging from preservation of the environment to humanitarian relief and the promotion of peace and tolerance. Bern Dibner took a sabbatical from his company to study Renaissance science in Zurich, published more than thirty books and articles in the history of science and technology, and acquired a personal library that grew in size to require its own building adjacent to the Burndy Corporation headquarters in Wilton, Connecticut, near which the History of Science Society held its annual meeting in both 1974 and 1983. In 1974, he contributed one-quarter of his book collection to the Smithsonian Institution to form the core of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, which is now part of the National Museum of American History, Behring Center. Before his death in 1988, Bern Dibner conceived an institute that might fulfill the vision of George Sarton for a Baconian program to support the study of the history of science.

David Dibner realized his father's vision. Following service in World War II, David studied engineering at Columbia University and continued postgraduate study at the London School of Economics. Later, he attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University. Joining the Burndy Corporation in 1952 as an engineer, David worked his way up through the organization to succeed his father as chairman of the board, also assuming the presidency of the Dibner Fund and Burndy Library in 1989. In these latter roles, he devoted himself to continuing his father's legacy and realizing his dream for an institute devoted to the history of science and technology.

The Dibner Fund called for a consortium of schools to be formed in the Boston–Cambridge area of Massachusetts, one among them to serve as the home for the Burndy Library and a new institute for the promotion of the history of science and technology. In due course, MIT was chosen and plans were made to renovate a building overlooking the Charles River at 38 Memorial Drive. A state-of-the-art library was built on its ground floor to preserve and display the Burndy Collection, and rooms were fitted out on the second and third floors to provide offices and public spaces for staff and fellows of the newly created Dibner Institute. The library and institute opened in 1992, accepting the first of more than 340 fellows who would study there over the ensuing years.

David oversaw this activity with his accustomed graciousness and strength of purpose. He sought out and embraced good advice. He surrounded himself with competent people at the Dibner Fund, Dibner Institute, and Burndy Library. He remained ever mindful of his father...