Jim Turner has had a rewarding career since the math major graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 1961.
I started at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., doing research in applied mathematics. After that I was involved with numerous startup companies in the San Francisco Bay area. I worked as a software engineer doing applications programming for such diverse applications as nuclear power plant training simulators, process control of tire tread extruders and butter churns, an out-the-window scene simulator for pilot training, and control software for a manufacturing robot. My final employment before retiring in 2003 was with Amersham Biosciences, since acquired by GE Healthcare. There, I was a bioinformatics programmer on DNA sequencing software used on the Human Genome Project and software for microarrays.”
Impressive? Sure it is! But what really stands out is what he has done in retirement.
Last summer, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, Turner, 75, attempted to do what no one his age has ever done: cycle 38,000 meters in one hour. After 60 minutes, he had ridden 38,494 meters on the velodrome track, which established a world record for the men’s age group 75-79.
Then again, the master cyclist is used to setting world records; the day before, he set two others in his age group by finishing the 2K Individual Pursuit event with a time of 2:51.42 and the 200-meter Time Trial with a time of 14.100 seconds.
—Emmett Zitelli (HNZ’01)
