Edsger W. Dijkstra

? Edsger Dijkstra Wybe / i [ ˌ ɛt sxər ' ʋibə dɛɪk ˌ stra ] ( born May 11, 1930 in Rotterdam, † August 6, 2002 in Nuenen, Netherlands) was a Dutch computer scientist. He was the pioneer of structured programming. In 1972 he received the Turing Award.

Life

Edsger Dijkstra was the son of a chemist and a mathematician. After attending high school in Rotterdam Erasmianum he studied from 1948 mathematics and theoretical physics at Leiden University. In 1951 he achieved the bachelor degree and attended after a programming course with Maurice V. Wilkes at the University of Cambridge. He continued his studies in Leiden, henceforth worked but the way the Mathematics Centre ( Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica today - Centre for Mathematics and computer science ) in Amsterdam. His supervisor there was a director Adriaan van Wijngaarden, who also persuaded him to completely switch to the programming rather serious theoretical physicist to be. In 1956 he reached the master degree, and went full-time force for Mathematisch Centrum. Dijkstra is called the first programmer of the Netherlands and wrote in 1959 at the University of Amsterdam, his doctoral thesis on the developed by the Mathematisch Centrum Electrologica X1 whose basic software he wrote.

In 1962 he became professor of mathematics at the Technical University Eindhoven. At elsewhere already offered computer science professorships he did not want to because he still saw no sufficient scientific basis for this. Nevertheless, he offered his students the opportunity to specialize in mathematical studies on topics in computer science after at least three years. He was further of the opinion that a study of computer science strongly influenced mathematically and about an introductory course in programming a form alma thematic event had to be free of programming languages. From 1973, he limited his work at the University as an associate professor point represented by the established him Eindhoven Tuesday Afternoon Club, where he Tuesday afternoon with colleagues discussing scientific problems and the latest papers, and became a full-time Research Fellow of the Burroughs Corporation. In 1984 he moved to the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He retired in 1999.

Dijkstra died on 6 August 2002 from cancer at his home in Nuenen. Him survived his wife Ria ( Marriage 1957) and three children.

His doctoral include Arie Habermann and Martin Rem.

Work

Among his contributions to computer science, the Dijkstra algorithm to find a shortest path computation in a graph (1959 published in a three -page article ), the first introduction of semaphores for synchronization between threads, and related philosophers problem and the banker algorithm.

Based on this experience, he designed the multi-tasking operating system THE ( Hogeschool Eindhoven by Technical ), which was known for its layered structure. Niklaus Wirth reports that Dijkstra realized in this work, to not be suitable for teamwork, and from now on only worked alone.

The late 1950s, Dijkstra was involved in the design of Algol 60, 1960, he introduced the first compiler for it done. He also designed the sorting algorithm Smoothsort and discovered the algorithm of Prim ( also Prim - Dijkstra algorithm or algorithm Jarnik, Prim and Dijkstra ) again.

Dijkstra wrote more than 1,300 so-called EWD manuscripts professional and private nature, which he photocopied each of a number of colleagues and sent by mail, but usually not published. Today, many EWD manuscripts are collected in an online archive. For the Burroughs Corporation, he wrote more than 500 scientific reports. Its most popular treatise Go To Statement Considered Harmful via the Goto command and why it should not be used. He introduced the concept of structured programming in the computer science, and popularized in his Turing Lecture The Humble Programmer also the concept of the software crisis, which he had received as a regular speaker at Friedrich L. Bauer International Summer School Marktoberdorf there.

Awards (selection)

Writings (selection )

  • A Note on Two Problems in Connexion with Graphs. Numerical Mathematics 1 (1959 ), pp. 269-271
  • Go To Statement Considered Harmful. Communications of the ACM 11, 3 (1968 ), pp. 147-148 (PDF)
  • Cooperating sequential processes. In: F. Genuys (ed.): Programming Languages ​​: NATO Advanced Study Institute. Academic Press, 1968, pp. 43-112.
  • Ole -Johan Dahl and Tony Hoare: Structured Programming. Academic Press, London, 1972, ISBN 0-12-200550-3 ( also includes 1970 written and previously unpublished Notes on Structured Programming)
  • Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective. Springer NY (1982 )
  • With Carel S. Scholten: Predicate Calculus and Program Semantics. Springer - Verlag, 1990, ISBN 0-387-96957-8
Maurice Wilkes Eindhoven University of Technology British Computer Society American Academy of Arts and Sciences Computer Pioneer Award NEC Dijkstra Prize Mathematics Genealogy Project Digital Object Identifier Alan Perlis James H. Wilkinson John McCarthy (computer scientist) Charles Bachman Donald Knuth Allen Newell Herbert A. Simon Michael O. Rabin Kenneth E. Iverson Stephen Cook Richard M. Karp John Cocke Manuel Blum Amir Pnueli Kristen Nygaard Ron Rivest Adi Shamir E. Allen Emerson Joseph Sifakis Charles P. Thacker Judea Pearl Leslie Lamport Integrated Authority File
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