Jacob E. Goldman, the former Xerox chief scientist who created the company’s famed Palo Alto Research Center, whose scientists and engineers invented the modern personal computer in the 1970s and developed an array of other pioneering computing technologies, has died. He was 90. Goldman, a resident of Westport, Conn., died Tuesday at a hospital in nearby Stamford after a short illness.

A physicist, Goldman had been the head of the research and development laboratory at Ford Motor Co. before joining Xerox, then based in Rochester, N.Y., as chief scientist in late 1967.

At the time, Xerox was the dominant manufacturer of office copiers. But as chief scientist responsible for overseeing all of the company’s research, Goldman quickly focused his attention on new technologies.

“There was this whole concept of the paperless office that was sort of in the air at the time,” said Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times business columnist and author of the 1999 book “Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC in the Dawn of the Computer Age.”

“Since Xerox earned a commission from every piece of paper that went through its leased copiers, Goldman understood that technologies that did not rely on paper posed a threat to the bottom line,” Hiltzik said.

Proposing that Xerox “establish scientific preeminence” in fast-developing computer technology, Goldman persuaded the company to create a new corporate lab that would focus on the future.

Using AT&T’s Bell Laboratories as a model, he sketched out a corporate research center that would engage in basic science.

Goldman recruited physicist George Pake to become the laboratory’s first director, and the Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, opened near Stanford University in 1970.

Xerox PARC researchers went on to invent the modern personal computer, the laser printer, Windows-style computing displays and the Ethernet, and they played an important role in the development of the Internet, Hiltzik said.

After leaving Xerox in the early ’80s, Goldman led and worked with a number of high-tech startups and served on the boards of the Burndy Corp., eMagin, the Marconi Foundation and a number of others.