Mason Lamar Williams
Mason Lamar Williams III | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20 January 1943 San Mateo, California, U.S. |
| Died | 28 June 2021 (aged 78) San Jose, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Engineer, physicist |
| Known for | Magnetic recording and data storage technologies related to hard disk drives |
Mason Lamar Williams III (January 20, 1943 – June 28, 2021) was a distinguished engineer and physicist renowned for his pioneering work in magnetic recording and data storage technologies related to hard disk drives (HDD). Much of his professional life was dedicated to the IBM Almaden Research Center located in San Jose, California. Upon retirement, he actively participated in the refurbishment and public demonstration of the IBM RAMAC at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Background and education
Williams was born in San Mateo, California, and completed his secondary education in Georgia. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1964. He then pursued graduate studies at the University of Southern California, where he obtained a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1966 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Physics by 1970. His doctoral advisor was Jan Smit, a physicist recognized for his research on magnetic ferrites. Williams married Phyllis in 1968; the couple resided in the Almaden Valley and had two sons. He passed away at age 78 in San Jose.
Career
Williams began his career at IBM’s San Jose facility in 1970, initially contributing to Manufacturing Research under Larry Comstock’s leadership. During the late 1970s, he was involved with magnetic bubble memory technology development. By 1982, Williams had joined the Magnetic Recording Institute, headed by Charles Denis Mee, where he oversaw research efforts on perpendicular magnetic recording. In 1985, he advanced to manage Advanced Recording Heads at IBM Almaden Research Center, concentrating on magnetic modeling techniques. He served as IBM’s representative on the National Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) UltraHigh Density Magnetic Recording Head initiative and later, in 1996, became part of INSIC’s Extremely High Density Recording Strategy Team that proposed TDMR technology. Following IBM’s HDD division acquisition by Hitachi in 2002, Williams continued fundamental research and system integration work at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST). After retiring from Hitachi GST in 2005, he played an instrumental role in restoring the original IBM RAMAC, the first commercial hard disk drive, at the Computer History Museum. He volunteered as a docent there and frequently demonstrated this historic device.
Awards and recognition
Williams was honored as an IEEE Fellow in 1999 for his significant contributions toward digital magnetic recording and improvements in areal density for disk drives. In 2006, he was appointed Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Magnetics Society and delivered talks worldwide on magnetic recording technologies. That same year, he received the Reynold B Johnson Data Storage Device Technology Award recognizing his leadership and engineering breakthroughs in storage devices. He held or co-held 27 US patents covering key innovations such as magnetoresistive read heads, Shingled Recording, and perpendicular recording. In 2001, IBM recognized him as a Master Inventor. Williams authored numerous scholarly articles and is credited with developing the Williams-Comstock model alongside Larry Comstock, which enhanced written transition optimization in magnetic recording systems.