Dr. Edwin D. Reilly, Jr., former Supervisor of the Town of Niskayuna, was born on April 27, 1932, in Troy, New York. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1946 of St. Paul's School, valedictorian of the class of 1950 of Catholic Central High School, and summa cum laude and distinguished Air Force ROTC graduate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, all in that City. He and his wife Jean, who met as high school freshmen, were married a week after the RPI graduation in 1954 and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2004. After a brief period at the R&D Center in Niskayuna while on the G.E. test program, he was called to active duty and spent the next two years in Washington with the National Security Agency where he held top secret cryptographic clearance.

Returning to the Capital District in 1956 as Captain Reilly, USAF Reserve, he worked for nine years at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, first as a mathematical analyst and then successively as manager of Reactor Physics Computations and manager of Digital Analysis and Computations. He joined the State University of New York at Albany in 1965 as founder and Director of its Computing Center and then in 1967 became the first chairman of its newly founded Computer Science department, one of the first ten in the now several hundred in the United States.

When he announced his candidacy for Town Supervisor in early 1969, his friends told him that a Democrat would be elected in Niskayuna when a man landed on the moon and the Mets won a World Series. All three happened that year, Dr. Reilly becoming the first member of his Party elected to the Town Board in the 160 year history of the Town. He served five consecutive two-year terms in the 1970s, but did not run for re-election in 1979. He returned to office in 1989 by appointment and was then elected to four additional 2-year terms. By 2008, his Niskayuna Democratic Party had maintained a majority on the Town Board for 18 of the prior 20 years.

During Dr. Reilly's 18.5 year tenure as Supervisor (1970-1979 and 1989-1997), the longest in Niskayuna history, the town built the hike & bike path along the Mohawk River, tennis courts at Blatnick Park, a partial extension of Nott Street East which made possible a new entrance to Niskayuna High School, the new Town Hall on that street, River Road Park, a pavilion at Avon Crest Town Park, a memorial park at Balltown and Van Antwerp Roads, a new soccer commons off Zenner Road, and four new Bambino baseball fields on River Road. The 1990s also saw the construction of the Town's branch post office on Nott Street East and the new Elizabeth Harriman Bean branch library across from Town Hall on land donated to the County by the Town, a rebuilt Troy Road, and sidewalks on Balltown Road.

Dr. Reilly is emeritus professor of computer science at SUNYA, having retired in 1991 in order to devote full time to his duties as Supervisor. He holds the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in physics from RPI. He is co-author of six books on computing and co-editor of the Wiley (UK) Encyclopedia of Computer Science, now in its fourth edition. He was also a consultant to the Merriam Webster company with regard to preparation of a one-volume edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Locally, he is past president of Freedom Forum, Friends of the Schenectady County Library, and the Schenectady Torch Club and was one of the founding members of the Human Services Planning Council. He is President of the Schenectady County Historical Society and a Trustee of the Schenectady County Library. Professionally, he is a member of the American Physical Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Sigma Xi scientific honor society, and the Mathematical Association of America. Beginning in January, 1998, he reassumed the position of President and CEO of Cybernetic Information Systems (CIS), an information processing company which he incorporated in 1980. CIS specializes in web page design, technical editing, and engineering and scientific computation. CIS has created Web pages for the Niskayuna Town government, the Schenectady County Historical Society, the Friends' Whitney Book Corner, the Schenectady Torch Club, and the Niskayuna Democratic Party. Dr. Reilly also writes a monthly op ed column for the Sunday Gazette.

Ed and his wife Jean have lived at 870 Cunningham Court in Niskayuna for 46 years. Their six married children are all graduates of St. Helen's School and Niskayuna High School. Collectively, they have provided their proud parents with 14 grandchildren:
Katie, Ben, Matt, Patrick, Ryan, Meghan, Phoebe, Jack, Laura, Andy, Henry, Zachary, Hannah, and Samantha.

 40th Anniversary Portrait, June 19, 1994

Back row: Michael, Daniel, David, Peter. Front row: Ellen Reilly Holtz, Jean, Ed, Diane Reilly Percy

JOURNAL COLUMNS

While Town Supervisor, Dr. Reilly wrote 225 columns for the Niskayuna Journal. Those available on-line are listed below. Just click on the title to read the column.

• Reminiscences of the KAPL of 35 years ago
• Whoever heard of a legislative executive?
• Teilhard de Chardin and the CIA
• A look at the world of 40 years ago
• A most extraordinary human kindness
• My first encounter with a Trojan horse
• A whale of a tale about the tail of a whale 
  

•   July 6                 The Illogical Flag Burning Amendment
  
•   July 20               Imperfections of Democracy
•   July 27               Signs of the Times
•   August 17          Sprawl - An Illusive Concept
  
•   September 21    Maps Shape Inner View of the World We Live In
  
•   October 12        Will Your Vote Count?
  
•   November 16     Smart Dust - Keeping Track of the Young and the Feckless
  

• On Reversible Subroutines and Computers that Run Backwards (1965)

• Elements of Digital Computer Programming, (co-author) Holden-Day, Inc. San Francisco, 1968 (textbook)

• "Resonant Scattering from Inhomogeneous Nonspherical Targets," Journal of Computational Physics, 11,4,463-492 (April 1973) (article)

• "Consciousness, Morality, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics" (co-author) SUNYA Computer Science Department Lab Report, 1976

• Weighting for Baudot and other problems for you and your computer (co-author) Avery Publications, Wayne NJ, 1978
  

• Taxonomy of Computer Science (one of 11 nationally selected co-authors) AFIPS Press, Washington DC, 1980

•  "Languages for the First Course in Computer Science" (prologue and epilog as guest editor), ABACUS, 1984 (a Springer-Verlag  magazine)

• Pascalgorithms (co-author), Houghton-Mifflin Co., Boston, 1988 (textbook)

• VAX Assembly Language Programming (co-author), Macmillan, New York, 1991 (textbook)

• Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 3^rd Edition (co-editor and author of 33 articles), International Thomson Publishers, NY, 1993

• Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 4^th Edition (co-editor and author of 49 articles) Macmillan (UK) / Grove, New York, 2000 (1^st imprint)  Wiley (UK), 2003 (2^nd imprint)

• Milestones of Computer Science and Information Technology (2003)

• Concise Encylopedia of Computer Science (2004)

   write to him at 870 Cunningham Court, Niskayuna, NY 12309-6302.

Ed's favorite classical piece: