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Ralph Griswold Dies
I learned the Icon programming language as a grad student at UC Davis. Ron Olsen, then a new assistant professor had just gotten his Ph.D. from Arizona where Ralph Griswold, Icon’s inventor taught and he brought it with him. Icon has a number of interesting programming language features. Griswold was also the inventor of SNOBOL. He died a few weeks ago. Computer Science has always been a discipline where the founders were still around. That’s changing.
Posted by windley on October 18, 2006 10:58 AM
Comment from Pat Ekman at October 18, 2006 11:48 AM
One of the great tragedies of computer science is that Alan Turing died so young. Now we're losing a lot more, such as Edsger Dijkstra in 2002. I can imagine it must have felt similar in the 1700's when people like Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke started dying. Personally, I'm hoping that Don Knuth lives long enough to reach the end of his original outline for The Art of Computer Programming.
Another, even greater tragedy in computer science is how little the younger generation (and I include myself in this) knows about its founders. Quite a few know about Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. How many know he invented the semaphore? Pretty much every CS student will implement Quicksort at some point. How many know it was developed by C. A. R. Hoare, and that he's still alive?
This is, I think, partly because CS is such a fast-moving field that there seems to be little time for looking back. Hopefully as the discipline matures this will be remedied. Introductory Physics textbooks are full of biographical sketches about its founders. It would be nice to see the same thing in CS.
Comment from Chris Loosley at October 18, 2006 11:55 PM
Pat, did you know anything about the Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org/), which now occupies the former Silicon Graphics building in Mountain View, CA? If not, it's a fascinating coincidence that you should decide to write today about the need to recognize the pioneers of computer science and doubly coincidental that you should mention C.A.R Hoare as an example.
Just yesterday evening, the museum held its annual Fellows Awards (http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/index.php?id=2) event, and Sir Tony was one of the Fellows inducted this year. You also mentioned Don Knuth, who was inducted in 1998. The Hall of Fellows page (http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/index.php?id=6) has links to short bigraphical sketches of each of the 40 fellows elected to date.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the first Fellows Awards event in 1987, when Grace Hopper was elected, so the museum is planning a special celebration. There is still much work to be done to refine both the physical museum exhibits and the information available online, but every year a small army of volunteers is helping to collect, restore, and document our industry's history while its founders are still alive. New members and/or donations are always most welcome!
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