A Brief History of Computer Science: Pioneers and Milestones, Slides of Computer Applications

Download A Brief History of Computer Science: Pioneers and Milestones and more Slides Computer Applications in PDF only on Docsity!

Ten Interesting Computer Scientists

Outline

• History of Computer Science
• John Backus
• Stephen Cook
• Seymour Cray
• Edsger Dijkstra
• Bill Gates
• Alan Kay
• Donald Knuth
• Leslie Lamport
• John McCarthy
• Alan Turing

History of Computer Science

• 1937 – Claude Shannon links Boolean logic to digital circuit design
• 1939 – Turing’s work plays a key role in breaking the Germans’ Enigma code machine
• 1943 – Small computers are being built in multiple countries
• 1950 – Turing proposes a test of machine intelligence, the Turing test
• 1956 – John McCarthy coins the term “artificial intelligence”

History of Computer Science

• 1957 – FORTRAN is released by John Backus and the IBM team
• 1958 – John McCarthy invents Lisp
• 1959 – John Backus and Peter Naur propose the use of context-free grammars to describe programming languages
• 1961 – Edsger Dijkstra applies the semaphore principle used in train signaling systems to mutual exclusion in computer operations

History of Computer Science

• 1973 – Leonid Levin publishes a paper identifying the class of NP-complete problems independently of Cook (research was conducted in 1971)
• 1977 – Leslie Lamport defines a model of time for distributed systems based on a partial order of events
• 1980 – Microsoft is founded, helping to push PCs into widespread use with the public

John Backus

“ We simply made up the language as we went along. We did not regard language design as a difficult problem, merely a simple prelude to the real problem: designing a compiler which could produce efficient programs...”

Achievements - John Backus

• Designer of FORTRAN
• Backus-Naur Form
• Designed FP, a functional programming language
• 1977 – Turing Award winner
• 1987 – named an IBM Fellow
• 1993 – awarded a Draper Prize

Trivia - John Backus

• Has a plate in his head of his own design after having a bone tumor
• Roughly half the work of designing FORTRAN went into generating efficient machine code
• After retiring in 1991, has completely withdrawn from computer science
• Practices meditation

Biography - Stephen Cook

• 1961 – B.S. in Mathematics from University of Michigan
• 1962, 1966 – M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard
• 1966-1970 – Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley
• 1970 – Joined University of Toronto as Associate Professor, Professor in 1975, and University Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics in 1985

Achievements - Stephen Cook

• Formalized the notion of NP-completeness
• Cook’s Theorem – concerns itself with reducing NP-complete problems to a general Satisfiability problem
• 1977 – Steacie Fellowship
• 1982 – Turing Award winner
• Fellow of Royal Society of Canada

Biography - Seymour Cray

• 1950 – B.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Minnesota
• 1951 – Awarded a M.S. in Applied Mathematics, University of Minnesota
• 1950 – Joined Engineering Research Associates
• 1960 – Joined Control Data Corporation
• 1965 – The CDC 6600, the first commercial supercomputer, is released
• 1972 – Founded Cray Research

Biography - Seymour Cray

• 1976 – The Cray-1 is released
• 1980 – Cray steps down as CEO of Cray Research and becomes an independent contractor
• 1989 – Founded Cray Computer Corporation
• 1995 – Set up SRC Computers, Inc
• 1996 – Died in a car accident

Trivia - Seymour Cray

• The vehicle Cray was driving when he died, a Jeep Cherokee, was designed on a Cray supercomputer
• In 1986, Apple bought a Cray X-MP and announced it would be used to design the next Macintosh, Cray replied that he was using a Macintosh to design the Cray- supercomputer

Edsger Dijkstra

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."