SFI Board member Robert Maxfield (right) with his wife Katherine Maxfield at SFI in 2019. (image: Gabriella Marks)

Robert (Bob) Maxfield, who served on the SFI Board of Trustees for three decades, passed away on August 13, 2024, at the age of 82. 

An avid learner with many interests, Maxfield first heard of SFI in 1989 while he was studying economics on his own time. He was asking questions similar to those that Nobel laureates and other experts in physics and economics were discussing at SFI.

Physicist and entrepreneur Robert Noyce, who knew SFI’s founder George Cowan, invited Maxfield to visit the fledgling institute. Maxfield soon after attended an SFI Symposium on complexity economics and was hooked. In 1992, he joined the Board of Trustees, on which he served in various capacities and as its longest-serving member.

“Bob was the exemplar to me of a curious and wide-ranging mind, and a steadfast friend to SFI, its mission, and its people,” says Katherine Collins, Chair of SFI’s Board of Trustees. “Every time I turned to him for counsel I was awarded with keen observation, deep institutional knowledge, and clarity of purpose. How fortunate we were to benefit from his wisdom on the SFI board for many years — and how much he will be missed.”
 
Besides serving on the Board, Maxfield also collaborated with SFI scientists on papers about evolutionary economics. His last paper, “From the primordial soup to self-driving cars: Standards and their role in natural and technological innovation,” was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface in 2016 in collaboration with SFI External Professors Andreas Wagner (University of Zurich) and Scott Ortman (University of Colorado Boulder). 

"I knew Bob, not primarily as a trustee of SFI, but as a highly valued collaborator,” says Wagner. “During our joint work, I was astonished by his intellectual breadth, and by his detailed technical understanding of some of SFI's research programs. He broadened my understanding of complexity research and opened my mind to new areas of science. Bob was an exceptional human being and I will sorely miss our interactions." 

In 1969, Maxfield co-founded ROLM Corporation, a computer and telecommunications manufacturer, which was an early example of a successful tech start-up. ROLM pioneered the casual management style that became the hallmark of the tech companies in Silicon Valley. Its gym, swimming pool, and tennis courts melded the line between work and play. It recruited some of the brightest technical minds and was known as a “Great Place to Work.” Maxfield served as ROLM’s Executive Vice President and Director until 1985 when IBM acquired the company in the largest deal Silicon Valley had seen until then.

By the time Maxfield joined SFI’s Board, he had served on many others. To him, a board’s role and responsibilities were clear: to make sure the institute succeeded. And to that end, he committed himself. He figured out ways to raise funds, headed the Communications Committee for PR and Outreach, set up a Strategic Planning Group, helped secure the land on which Cowan Campus is built, and led the group that planned and executed renovations and new construction at Cowan Campus. He engaged in the architectural discussions on how the building could be structured and was pivotal in the designing of the pods, three collaborative research working spaces. Pod B is dedicated to Robert Maxfield and Katherine Maxfield, his wife. The reward, for him, was always to be able to sit in and learn science. 

“Bob was the model trustee: he loved the science, contributed to the Institute in multiple ways, and was a ready source of wise counsel,” says SFI Trustee Michael Mauboussin. “I was deeply saddened to hear the news about Bob. He was super smart, had impeccable judgment, and having served on the board for most of SFI’s existence, had extremely valuable institutional memory."

“Bob carefully read the papers SFI researchers wrote. His interests were centered on questions of technological evolution and innovation, and they radiated into far-ranging branches of complexity science, from the origin of life to the limits of artificial intelligence,” says SFI President David Krakauer. “Science and engineering were the foundations of Bob’s interest and the platform for his long-standing support of SFI science. Bob was smart, kind, and committed and everyone benefited from his judgment. I sought him out often and will find him again in my ‘strange-loop’ of virtualized friends. We shall all miss him.”

A celebration of Robert Maxfield's life will take place on Sunday, September 29, at 2:30 pm PT, at Sharon Heights Country Club, 2900 Sandhill Road, Menlo Park, CA.