(L-R) Paul E. Raether ’68, P’93, ’96, ’01, Chairman of the Trinity College Board of Trustees; Dean of Faculty Rena Fraden; President James F. Jones, Jr.; Micah Nutt ’85; Sarah Nutt Papageorge; Tom Nutt; and Bob Nutt.

Academic building rededicated Roy Nutt Mathematics, Engineering & Computer Science Center

On May 18, Trinity’s MCEC building was rededicated as the Roy Nutt Mathematics, Engineering & Computer Science Center. The 48,000-squarefoot, César Pelli-designed facility, which originally opened in 1991, was named for Roy Nutt, Class of 1953. Nutt, who died in 1990, graduated with a degree in mathematics and was an early expert in computer systems programming. The principal creator of the FORTRAN program language, he was co-founder of Computer Sciences Corporation, which today is known as CSC, a worldwide company with 98,000 employees and reported revenue of $16 billion.

Roy Nutt’s introduction to computers took place on Trinity’s campus and at the United Aircraft (UA) (now United Technologies Corporation) research department’s East Hartford laboratory. He spent the summer between his junior and senior years working at the lab, feeding punch cards into calculators and becoming so familiar with binary coding that he could read punch cards by sight. He worked full-time at UA in his senior year and by graduation was the night shift supervisor, with eight other Trinity students reporting to him. For the next six years, he supervised research in the UA Machine Computation Laboratory and also shared his knowledge with Trinity undergraduates as a part-time instructor of mathematics.

A leadership gift from Roy and Ruth Nutt in the 1980s propelled the Mathematics, Engineering & Computer Science Center building project forward. Ruth Nutt’s leadership support in the 1990s for the renovation and expansion of what would become the Raether Library and Information Technology Center made it possible for the information technology staff to move to the library, thus opening more lab and classroom space in the building. Both Roy and Ruth Nutt served as Trinity trustees, and Roy was a 1988 recipient of Trinity’s Eigenbrodt Cup, the highest award that can be presented to an alumnus.