Werner Emanuel Neuman was born on February 16, 1926, in Kassel, Germany. He fled the Nazis with his family 1938 and traveled by boat to Havana, Cuba and then Miami, Florida before settling in Chicago.

Werner was drafted into the army in early 1945 and shipped out to Europe, where he served as an interpreter in Germany and Austria.

After the war he graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering in 1949. He founded the electronic components company Corcom and spent 50 years as its leader. When he retired, Corcom components were inside millions of personal computers and other sophisticated digital devices worldwide.

Werner and his wife Judy were married for 58 years. They built pioneering passive solar houses in Long Grove, Illinois and Aspen Colorado where they lived with their two children.

Werner loved the outdoors and was an enthusiastic skier and hiker. He took raft trips through the Grand Canyon and on the Snake and Green Rivers and camping trips in the mountains of Colorado and Montana, often sleeping in a pyramid-shaped bright yellow tent.

His last day of skiing was on his 87th birthday. He died two years later in 2015.