Career
He also taught mathematics part-time for several years at Knoxville College and worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, while on leave from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1968 until 1971. An expert on pseudo-random number generators, today he is probably best known for the title of an article published in 1970: "Random Number Generation Is Too Important to Be Left to Chance". After the end of World World War II he returned to Chicago to finish his undergraduate degree in Mathematics, and in the following year he received his masters degree from the University of Tennessee, both while employed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Coveyou then returned to the laboratory for the remainder of his career, retiring in 1976.
In the early 1950s, Coveyou was one of the scientists and engineers involved in the early introduction of computers to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and has been credited with naming the first computer housed at the laboratory: the ORACLE (Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine). In preparation for working on the computer in Oak Ridge, Coveyou spent two stretches of several weeks each at Remington Rand Corporation in New York City working with their staff to learn how they used the new Universal Automatic Computer computer.
Bob Coveyou was also active politically and in the civil rights movement. He helped lead an effort to establish Scarboro High School in the African American neighborhood of Oak Ridge.
The school operated from 1950 until Oak Ridge High School was desegregated in the fall of 1955.
Prior to the opening of Scarboro High School, African American children in Oak Ridge had to bus into Knoxville, 30 miles away, to attend Austin High School.