Modesto
Modesto ( ; ) is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, United States. With a population of 218,069 according to 2022 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, it is the 19th-most populous city in California.
Modesto is locate ...
Tucson
Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...
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 ...
known for his research into high-level
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs.
Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...
s and
symbolic computation
In mathematics and computer science, computer algebra, also called symbolic computation or algebraic computation, is a scientific area that refers to the study and development of algorithms and software for manipulating mathematical expressions ...
. His language credits include the
string processing
String functions are used in computer programming languages to manipulate a string or query information about a string (some do both).
Most programming languages that have a string datatype will have some string functions although there may b ...
language
SNOBOL
SNOBOL ("StriNg Oriented and symBOlic Language") is a series of programming languages developed between 1962 and 1967 at AT&T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky, culminating in SNOBOL4. It was one of a ...
Icon
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...
.
He attended
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, receiving a bachelor's degree in physics, then an M.S. and Ph.D. in
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. Griswold went to
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
in 1962, where he studied ideas for non-numerical computation. SNOBOL was the outcome; it was a radically different language in its time and still is. He became the head of the Labs' Programming Research and Development department in 1967.
In 1971, he was hired by the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...
to be its first professor of computer science, subsequently organized the department, and was its head until 1981. While at Arizona, Griswold developed
Icon
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...
. The earlier
Ratfor
Ratfor (short for ''Rational Fortran'') is a programming language implemented as a preprocessor for Fortran#FORTRAN 66, Fortran 66. It provides Structured programming, modern control structures, unavailable in Fortran 66, to replace GOTOs and sta ...
implementation of Icon was discarded and the language rewritten from scratch in C and UNIX.
In 1990 Griswold was appointed Regents' Professor, and he retired in 1995. "As one of the founders of the Bell Labs software culture that spawned UNIX, C, and many other essential contributions to modern software, Ralph Griswold brought to his academic research not only brilliance, but also experience and a value system that demanded that research ideas be tested by fire and proven useful and usable by real users, not just good-looking diagrams in academic papers."
After his retirement, his interests turned to the mathematical aspects of
weaving
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal ...
.
Griswold died on October 4, 2006, from cancer.
Griswold's son,
Bill Griswold
William G. Griswold is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.Ralph Griswold home page at Arizona
Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
, University of Minnesota. Wampler discusses his work on the development of the
Icon programming language
Icon is a very high-level programming language based on the concept of "goal-directed execution" in which an expression in code returns "success" along with a result, or a "failure", indicating that there is no valid result. The success and fail ...
Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
, University of Minnesota. Goldberg discusses his interaction with Ralph Griswold when working on the
Icon programming language
Icon is a very high-level programming language based on the concept of "goal-directed execution" in which an expression in code returns "success" along with a result, or a "failure", indicating that there is no valid result. The success and fail ...
Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...