Philip Harrison “Phil” Enslow Jr, Professor Emeritus, College of Computing

In 25 years at Georgia Tech’s School of Information and Computer Science (ICS) and the College of Computing, Phil Enslow (1933-2022) left his mark as a researcher, teacher, leader and mentor.  In 1975 when he was hired, ICS was transitioning to a more computer science and systems intensive focus; Phil was the first faculty member with such broad expertise in the computer systems area.  His  broad research program on "Fully Distributed Processing Systems," which supported the early work of many young ICS faculty members in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was based on a radical vision about the convergence of telecommunications, networking technology and operating systems that went from being a fringe idea in 1980 to something completely mainstream over the next few decades.

During the 1980s Phil developed a comprehensive educational program in telecommunications which grew out of his research on the X.25 protocol, an area in which he became world-renowned.  A large grant of Northern Telecom X.25 network switches formed the basis of his telecommunications lab.  The first IP router (Cisco) on campus was installed in Phil’s lab in the late 1980s, and when Tech’s central IT group installed a second IP router, the first IP backbone was established over the campus CATV network.

In 1988 the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, awarded Phil the Blaeu Prize; the annual award was named for the 17th century cartographer Willem Blaeu of Amsterdam, and honors individuals “who have contributed in a globally significant way to the development of international telecommunications.”  He was also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the first international journal in this field, Computer Networks -The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking.  Phil was the Editor-in-Chief until 2000 when he became the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus.

Phil was heavily involved in guiding the transition to the College of Computing in 1990, and he served as the senior leader of a group of faculty with whom Founding Dean Peter Freeman regularly consulted on strategic matters.  As the College struggled early on to be taken seriously, Phil’s leadership in the area of promotion and tenure decisions as chair of the "Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure Committee,” a position he held for almost 19 years (including ICS), was important to the development of respect for the College across the rest of the campus.

Phil retired from Tech in August 2000.  One of his early colleagues summed up Phil’s contributions this way:  when she joined ICS in 1980 she was “confused about what networking was doing in ICS…it was only later that I recognized that in many ways ICS was ahead of its time. That became clear when we became the College of Computing.  Phil was always there in the forefront as a leader in helping ICS and then CoC move forward; he was there for the organization and for individuals. It was a pleasure to be his mentee and his colleague.” 

Phil received his undergraduate degree at the US Military Academy, where he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Signal Corp in 1955.  He received his Master’s (1959) and PhD (1965) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University while serving in the U.S. Army.