It’s a special honour to have a Rationable Interview with Leonard Tramiel. He a good friend of Rationable, of course. You might have seen him in the Rationable Conversations group on Facebook if you’re a part of it. Join in if you’re not. 

He’s also an accomplished sceptic in his own right. He’s a member of the board of the Center for Inquiry (CFI). This is an organisation of sceptics that publishes the Skeptical Inquirer magazine and holds the annual CSICON sceptics’ conference in Las Vegas, which is where I first met Leonard. 

Leonard is also on the Council of Advisors for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (SETI)! Yes, that SETI. He has worked with the California Department of Education to help them improve the quality of their textbooks. That’s not surprising at all when you know he’s been a volunteer 8th-grade astronomy teacher as well. 

Last but not least, Leonard started his career working under his father in Atari, developing their very first gaming platforms. Yes, that Atari! 

So we had a nice long chat about his early life, his passion for physics and astronomy, his family life and being the son of Jack Tramiel, who revived Commodore International and enabled the creation of one of the very first PC microchips that contributed to the dawn of personal computing. We also talked about his time at Atari, his encounter with Jill Tarter of SETI (who inspired the character of Dr Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan’s novel Contact), his pet peeves with science literacy and much much more. 

I would love to do another interview with him so if you have any questions, be sure to drop them in the comments or mail them to abhijit@berationable.com. 

Reference Links

Leonard’s interview with Jill Tarter: https://centerforinquiry.org/conferences/csicon/2016/interview-tarter.html