Ralph E. Gomory

Ralph E. Gomory became the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1989 after a long and distinguished career at IBM where he was responsible for IBM’s research division for almost 20 years. During his tenure as Sloan President, he led the Sloan Foundation into numerous fields relevant to major national issues. The Foundation supported pioneering work in the field of online learning before there was even a public Internet, and then supported its growth so that by 2009, more than 3.9 million people were enrolled annually in online courses in higher education in the United States. He was instrumental in the conception of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), now the Online Learning Consortium. In December 2007, Gomory became President Emeritus of the Sloan Foundation and joined NYU as a Research Professor. Dr. Gomory is well known for his mathematical research and has been awarded the National Medal of Science and many other awards in addition to eight honorary degrees.