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IBM also started a lab associated with Columbia University in New York City, located near the university. The lab was headed by Carl Eckert, a noted astronomer who was the first to use "computers" in order to perform astronomical computations. Eckert's "computer" was actually an assemblage of miscellaneous data processing machines, punch cards and such, wired together to perform the computations that Eckert designed. Other notable scientists at the Columbia lab included Lwellyn Thomas, a notable theoretical physicist, Richard Garwin, a jack of all trades, Irwin Hahn and Al Redfield working on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), and Sol Triebwasser who eventually contributed to the development of Field Effect Transistor (FET) technology. Brillouin, another luminary in Physics, was a consultant to the lab. .
The modern IBM Research Labs building at Yorktown was designed by Eero Saarinen who had achieved a certain reputation as the most eminent designer of such buildings, having also designed the Research building of General Motors in Warren, Michigan. The IBM Research building was perched on a hill, presenting an impressive view to anyone driving nearby. Its entrance was adorned by two somewhat incomprehensible but very artistic structures known as the Argonauts, symbolizing the exploratory nature of the building. It was in this building that I was hired to work by IBM in late 1961. I had spent almost five years since my PhD at the General Motors Research Labs, at the recommendation of my mentor Mindlin who told me that GM had hired a new Vice President, Larry Hafstad, who wanted to build GM's basic research activities, and it was worth my trying to ride that tide. My years at GM had been very pleasant and productive, under the brilliant tutelage of a great man, Robert Herman. I had been engaged first in Applied Physics research and later in a newly developed science of modeling of automobile traffic, joining an exclusive family of founders of the new science which also included another brilliant scientist, Elliott Montroll, a professor at Johns Hopkins who worked with Bob Herman's group as a consultant .