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CONTACT: Virginia Gold
IMMEDIATE
Internationally Acclaimed Computing Pioneer Known for Wit and Wisdom August 9, 2002, New York -- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, an internationally acclaimed winner of the ACM Turing Award, died August 6, at his home in Nuenen, the Netherlands, after a long illness. Renowned for his insight that mathematical logic is and must be the basis for sensible computer program construction, he designed the shortest path algorithm. Among his principal contributions to computing were building operating systems as explicitly synchronized sequential processes, and developing formal computer programs. Notorious for his wit and eloquence, he wrote over thirteen hundred scholarly works, preferring the fountain pen to the computer in producing seminal contributions for more than 40 years. In 1972, Dijkstra received the Turing Award, known as the Nobel prize of computing, for his major contributions to the development in the late1950's of ALGOL, a high level programming language, which became a model of clarity and mathematical rigor. As the award's citation noted, "He is one of the principal exponents of the science and art of programming languages, and has greatly contributed to our understanding of their structure, representation and implementation." Dijkstra was a leader in the abolition of the GO TO statement from programming. In a March 1968 letter to the editor of Communications of the ACM entitled "Go To Statement Considered Harmful," he contended that the more GO TO statements there are in a program, the harder it is to follow the program's source code. The letter is generally considered to have initiated the movement to develop reliable software. According to The History of Computing Project, Dijkstra's effort helped make the computer software industry more disciplined. Dijkstra enriched the language of computing with many concepts and phrases, such as "synchronization," "deadly embrace," "guarded command" and "structured programming." According to his colleagues at the University of Texas, simplicity, beauty and eloquence were his hallmarks, and his uncompromising insistence on elegance in programming and mathematics was an inspiration to thousands. Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Dijkstra earned degrees in mathematics and theoretical physics from the University of Leyden and a Ph.D. in computing science from the University of Amsterdam. After working as a programmer and professor in the Netherlands, he became a Burroughs Corporation research fellow in 1973. He held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computing Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin beginning in 1984, and retired as professor emeritus in 1999. During his career he was recognized by prestigious academic institutions all over the world, including the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Computer Society, and Athens University of Economics. "In their capacity as a tool," Dijkstra noted during his Turing Award acceptance speech, "computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind." Dijkstra and his wife often explored state and national parks in their Volkswagen bus dubbed the Touring Machine, in which he wrote many technical papers. About ACM The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students. ACM serves its global membership of 75,000 by delivering cutting edge technical information and transferring ideas from theory to practice. ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Portal to Computing Literature. With its journals and magazines, special interest groups, conferences, workshops, electronic forums and Career Resource Centre, ACM is a primary resource to the information technology field. For more information, see www.acm.org. |
