March 10th, 2009
Barbara Liskov wins 2008 Turing Award
I don’t tend to report or blog much about various scientific awards that get handed out over the year. However, this one is worth a quick note since Barbara Liskov co-wrote one of the canonical college texts on programming (Abstraction and Specification in Program Development) and has had a hand in virtually every modern programming language, as well as the algorithms behind Internet search.
Liskov, now a professor at MIT, was the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in computer science and was honored today as the recipient of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award. In addition to a $250,000 prize, the award acknowledges her really extraordinary contributions to the field, regardless of the doors she opened in the industry for other women.
According to the press release from the Association for Computing Machinery,
The award cites Liskov for her foundational innovations to designing and building the pervasive computer system designs that power daily life. Her achievements in programming language design have made software more reliable and easier to maintain. They are now the basis of every important programming language since 1975, including Ada, C++, Java, and C#
I’m just happy to crank out a couple blog posts a day and keep our district up and running. Geez…talk about inadequacy.
In all seriousness, though, congratulations to Dr. Liskov.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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| 03/12/09
