Maurice Peter Herlihy (born 4 January 1954) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

active in the field of

multiprocessor Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...

synchronization Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the Conductor (music), conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are sa ...

. Herlihy has contributed to areas including theoretical foundations of wait-free synchronization, linearizable data structures, applications of

combinatorial topology In mathematics, combinatorial topology was an older name for algebraic topology, dating from the time when topological invariants of spaces (for example the Betti numbers) were regarded as derived from combinatorial decompositions of spaces, such a ...

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

, as well as hardware and software

transactional memory In computer science and computer engineering, engineering, transactional memory attempts to simplify concurrent programming by allowing a group of load and store instructions to execute in an linearizability, atomic way. It is a concurrency control ...

. He is the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1994. Herlihy was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2013 for concurrent computing techniques for linearizability, non-blocking data structures, and transactional memory.

Recognition

* 2003 Dijkstra Prize * 2004

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

* 2005

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

* 2012 Dijkstra Prize * 2013 W. Wallace McDowell Award * 2013

* 2014 National Academy of Inventors Fellow * 2015 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member * 2022 Dijkstra Prize

References

External links

Website
* 1954 births American computer scientists Researchers in distributed computing 2005 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Gödel Prize laureates Brown University faculty Living people Dijkstra Prize laureates {{compu-scientist-stub