James E. DobsonI have a forthcoming co-authored (w/ Rena Mosteirin) biographical account of the Perceptron and Frank Rosenblatt (Perceptron, punctum books, S24). I want to begin to share some of my research into this fascinating figure and his foundational work on what we are (unfortunately) once again calling artificial intelligence.
Let’s talk about Frank Rosenblatt’s father today. Frank Ferdinand Rosenblatt is the other Dr. Frank Rosenblatt (Frank, the younger, did not have a middle name). He was born as Ephraim in Luboml in Volhynia, Ukraine and likely on May 11, 1884 (records differ on the year).
Frank Ferdinand was involved in radical politics through the General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (“The Bund”) and was likely threatened with arrest or worse and escaped, as a young man, to Switzerland and then the United States in 1903.
Educated in a yeshiva and then in a gymnasium while in Russia, when he arrived in the US, he was accepted at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. Along the way he married in 1910 another Russian Jewish immigrant, Katherine Golding.
While working on his doctoral dissertation, he became the General Secretary of the Workmen’s Circle aka the Arbeter Ring. He was a proponent of mutual aid and worked to organize support for new immigrants.
Frank Ferdinand’s 1916 dissertation, “The Chartist Movement in its Social and Economic Aspects,” examined this popular labor movement and the lessons it might provide for the present. It became a classic and was reprinted several times.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft3902b80w&seq=7
Following his degree, he went to work for two major Jewish organizations: Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Bureau of Jewish Social Research. This work brought him back to Russia and to Lithuania and Czechoslovakia. He raised funds from American Jews to help aid the estimated 1.5m Ukrainian Jewish victims of the pogrom.
Back in NY, while continuing work for the JDC, Frank Ferdinand started a publishing company. Frank-Maurice (named after himself and his first-born son) took over a failed press and began publishing in 1925. They published beautiful books on topics including Jewish tales and legends as well as literary work and translations.
Frank Rosenblatt was born on July 11, 1928 and never knew his father. Frank Ferdinand died on November 6, 1927, eight months before his son’s birth. Frank Ferdinand was buried in the Workmen’s Circle section of the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, New York.
Frank Ferdinand’s work touched many thousands of lives and he was widely mourned. Some of his records are held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the JDC Archives.
