Ole-Johan Dahl

Ole -Johan Dahl (born 12 October 1931 in Mandal, Norway, † June 29, 2002 in Asker, Norway) was a Norwegian computer scientist and Turing Prize winner.

Life

Dahl was born in 1931 as the eldest son of a seafaring family. He studied from 1949 at the University of Oslo numerical mathematics and performed during the study from 1952 on Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt (FFI, Research Institute of the Norwegian armed forces) his military service, where he worked on the programming of military computers led by Jan V. Garwick and his assistant Kristen Nygaard. Among other things, he designed the high-level language (MAC Mercury Automatic Coding) for the Ferranti Mercury. In 1957 he presented his thesis for Candidatus realium on the representation and manipulation of multidimensional arrays ( arrays), Multiple Index countings on the Ferranti Mercury computer. He then attended the FFI a full time position, and was closest colleagues Garwicks while Nygaard more of Operations Research devoted and finally to the Regnesentral Norsk ( NO, Norwegian Computing Center) changed, the research director he was. Dahl supported him as an expert on programming language design in the project, the programming languages ​​Simula I (1961-1965) and Simula 67, which is considered the first object-oriented computer language, develop, and followed him all the way to the 1963 NO.

He was appointed at the University of Oslo for the first professor of computer science in Norway in 1968. He built the course for years virtually alone on, presented in the course of but a his collaboration on the development of simulation in order to devote himself more to the theoretical foundations of computer science, and especially the programming and the correctness of programs. He remained in Oslo until his retirement in 1999.

In 2001 he received together with Nygaard John von Neumann Medal of the IEEE and the ACM Turing Award. The Norwegian king appointed him and Kristen Nygaard in 2000 to commanders of the St. Olav's Order. He was also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea and Honorary Member of the Object Management Group and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lund.

From the marriage with his wife, Tove (1963 ) had two children.

Ole -Johan Dahl died on 29 June 2002 from cancer, his friend and colleague Kristen Nygaard died in August. The Association Internationale pour les Technologies Objets awards in her honor every year since 2005 the Dahl - Nygaard Prize.

Writings

  • EW Dijkstra & CAR Hoare: Structured Programming. Academic Press, London 1972, ISBN 0-12-200550-3
  • Verifiable Programming. Prentice Hall, New York, 1992; revised 1993 edition, ISBN 0-13-951062-1
October 12 IEEE John von Neumann Medal Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Association for Computing Machinery Alan Perlis Maurice Wilkes James H. Wilkinson John McCarthy (computer scientist) Charles Bachman Donald Knuth Allen Newell Herbert A. Simon Michael O. Rabin Kenneth E. Iverson Stephen Cook Niklaus Wirth Richard M. Karp John Cocke Manuel Blum Amir Pnueli Ron Rivest Adi Shamir E. Allen Emerson Joseph Sifakis Charles P. Thacker Judea Pearl Leslie Lamport Integrated Authority File
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