Historical Figures Codexery

Edsger W. Dijkstra

Dutch computer scientist and pioneer of structured programming

Dijkstra won the ACM Turing Award in 1972 for his advocacy of structured programming.[1] After returning from Austin to his Nuenen home, Dijkstra succumbed to cancer on 6 August 2002.[2][3]

Quick Facts

Born
11 May 1930
Birthplace
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Died
6 August 2002
Place of death
Nuenen, Netherlands
Spouse
Ria C. Debets
Children
  • Marcus
  • Femke
  • Rutger
Field
Computer science, Theoretical computer science
Workplaces
Mathematisch Centrum, Eindhoven University of Technology, Burroughs Corporation, University of Texas at Austin

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

Dijkstra's father Douwe Wybe Dijkstra was a chemist and his mother Brechtje Cornelia Kluijver was a mathematician.[4][5] Dijkstra became the Netherlands' first official "programmer" in March 1952 through a job offer from Adriaan van Wijngaarden.[6] He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1959 for a thesis on communication with an automatic computer.[7] Dijkstra became a professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology in 1962 and later built the THE operating system there.[8][9]

During his 1952-1962 tenure at the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam, Dijkstra and a colleague produced the first ALGOL 60 compiler by August 1960.[8][6] For the ARMAC computer's 1956 inauguration demonstration, Dijkstra both formulated and solved the shortest path problem.[6] In August 1973, Dijkstra became a research fellow for the Burroughs Corporation, carrying out his duties from his Nuenen home.[8]

What the cited sources add

The Dijkstra Archive notes that his scientific contributions are fundamental to algorithm design, programming languages, program design, operating systems, distributed processing, and formal specification.[10] Dijkstra himself stated in his 1972 Turing Lecture that he entered the programming profession officially on the first spring morning of 1952.[11] He also wrote that when he married in 1957, Dutch marriage rites required him to state his profession as a programmer.[11] The Dijkstra Archive describes how he mailed copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, known as "EWDs," to several dozen recipients for over four decades.[10]

The archive explains that the informal circulation of many EWDs eventually reached into the thousands due to photocopying and wide interest.[10] The Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing honors his foundational work on concurrency primitives such as the semaphore.[10]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Edsger W. Dijkstra - A.M. Turing Award Laureate", amturing.acm.org (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Goodwins, "Computer science pioneer Dijkstra dies", 8 August 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Goodwins, "Computer science pioneer Dijkstra dies", 8 August 2002; "World-renowned University of Texas at Austin computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra dies", UT News, 7 August 2002; Dale, "Computer Science Illuminated", Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 31 December 2014, p. 316; "Edsger Dijkstra Passes Away", Dr. Dobb's Journal, 2002, p. 14; Markoff, "Edsger Dijkstra, 72, Physicist Who Shaped Computer Era", The New York Times, 10 August 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "De Rotterdamsche Chemische Kring in de jaren 1945 tot 1963 - CHG", chg.kncv.nl (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Edsger Wybe Dijkstra", Stichting Digidome, 3 September 2003; O'Connor, "Dijkstra biography", MacTutor, July 2008; "Edsger Dijkstra - Biography", Maths History (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Faulkner, "In Memoriam: Edsger Wybe Dijkstra", University of Texas at Austin, 19 August 2013 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Dijkstra, Edsger Wiebe, "Communication with an automatic computer", Uitgeverij Excelsior/CWI, 28 October 1959 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Apt, "Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930 - 2002): A portrait of a genius", Formal Aspects of Computing, 2002, p. 92–98 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Edsger W. Dijkstra" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Faulkner, "In Memoriam: Edsger Wybe Dijkstra", University of Texas at Austin, 19 August 2013; Silberschatz, "Operating System Concepts", 1988, p. 512 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. "The manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra", E. W. Dijkstra Archive. facts only, no text reused. cs.utexas.edu
  11. Dijkstra, "The Humble Programmer", ACM Turing Lecture 1972, 1972. facts only, no text reused. cs.utexas.edu

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Edsger W. Dijkstra (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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