Hiram Yeager

Hiram Yeager is a character in the Dirk Pitt adventure novels by novelist Clive Cussler.

Yeager is in charge of the computer lab, which he designed and operates at the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). Admiral James Sandecker, the head of NUMA has given Yeager free run in the creation and operation of the computer lab. Yeager is described as failing to quite make the transition from hippie to executive, and still wears old jeans, cowboy boots, Levi's jacket, granny glasses, and his hair in a ponytail.

Yeager has his computer system on the 10th floor of the NUMA building. His original computer was "Hope" because he hoped that it would give him the right answer. However his masterpiece was Max. As part of the NUMA computer system, "Max" is Yeager's most distinctive creation, a computer personality that serves as a graphical user interface to the computer. Max is displayed as an image of his wife (an acclaimed artist) projected three-dimensionally in a special chamber. Max can understand human speech and is a talking and self-thinking computerized manifestation. In fact Max often jokes and offers witty commentary. On occasion, Max can and will break into or hack other computers in order to gain information. The computer personality of MAX is similar to another well known computer-personality, "Mike" from the 1966 Robert A. Heinlein novel "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress".

It is interesting to compare Max to the old-fashioned archive maintained by St. Julien Perlmutter, both Max and Perlmutter are used for research although it would seem that Perlmutter's archive could be loaded into Max, making Perlmutter unnecessary.

Hiram and Max will occasionally work all night together when doing research for coworkers as they did in Treasure of Khan, where they dug up earthquake data and cross referenced it with a custom program to test the characterists of quakes.

Yeager and his wife have two daughters who attended private school and are seeking a college of their choice. The Yeager family lives in Sharpsburg, Maryland on a farm where they raise horses.

Yeager drives a V-12 BMW and his wife drives a Cadillac Escalade.