Conrad (Conny) Palm

Contributor to teletraffic engineering and queueing theory, Palm also led the project that developed the first Swedish computer, the BARK. He enrolled at the School of Electrical Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1925, being awarded his M.Sc. (1940) and Ph.D. (1943) on a dissertation entitled Intensitätsschwankungen im Fernsprechverkehr. His work was also joint with L. M. Ericsson, cooperating with Christian Jacobæus. He attended Harald Cramér's queueing theory group and met William Feller (1937).

Later, Palm served on the Swedish Board for Computing Machinery (Matematikmaskinnnämnden), where he led the project that developed the first Swedish computer, the BARK (1947–51), informally referred to as CONIAC (for his first name plus Integrator And Calculator). He was adjunct professor in telecommunications at the Royal Institute of Technology as well.

Professor Håkan Sterky, who was his thesis advisor, characterised him as a bohemian and a brilliant statistician. Palm had started his research before he graduated, which seemed to be due to a lack of interest in some undergraduate courses rather than the level of difficulty of the courses. To apply pressure on him, it was finally agreed that his monthly salary from Ericsson would only be paid out if he had passed one of his remaining undergraduate exams that month. Sterky related how Palm would typically show up a few days before pay day wishing to sit for an oral exam.