Alan Jay Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

and professor at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

. He is best known for his pioneering work in

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s and was the first recipient of the

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...

Biography

Perlis was born to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

. He graduated from

Taylor Allderdice High School Taylor Allderdice High School is a public high school in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It opened in 1927 and is part of the Pittsburgh Public Schools district. It was named for industrialist and S ...

in 1939. In 1943, he received his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later renamed

). During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, he served in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

, where he became interested in mathematics. He then earned both a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

(1949) and a Ph.D. (1950) in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

(MIT). His doctoral dissertation was titled "On Integral Equations, Their Solution by Iteration and

Analytic Continuation In complex analysis, a branch of mathematics, analytic continuation is a technique to extend the domain of definition of a given analytic function. Analytic continuation often succeeds in defining further values of a function, for example in a ...

". In 1952, he participated in

Project Whirlwind Whirlwind I was a Cold War-era vacuum tube computer developed by the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory for the U.S. Navy. Operational in 1951, it was among the first digital electronic computers that operated in real-time for output, and the firs ...

. He joined the faculty at

and in 1956, moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was chair of mathematics and then the first head of the

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

department. In 1962, he was elected president 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 member ...

. He was awarded the inaugural Turing Award in 1966, according to the citation, "for his influence in the area of advanced programming techniques and

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

construction." This is a reference to the work he had done on ''Internal Translator'' in 1956 (described by

Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...

as the first successful compiler), and as a member of the team that developed the programming language

ALGOL ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

. In 1971, Perlis moved to

to take the chair of computer science and hold the Eugene Higgins chair. In 1977, he was elected to the

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

. In 1982, he wrote an article, "

Epigrams on Programming "Epigrams on Programming" is an article by Alan Perlis published in 1982, for ACM's SIGPLAN journal. The epigrams are a series of short, programming-language-neutral, humorous statements about computers and programming, which are widely quoted. I ...

", for the

's (ACM)

SIGPLAN SIGPLAN is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on programming languages. Conferences * Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) * Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) * International Symposium on ...

journal, describing in one-sentence distillations many of the things he had learned about programming over his career. The

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mill ...

s have been widely quoted. He remained at Yale until his death in 1990.

Publications

Publications, a selection:For a listing of his talks and lectures (1951–1988) se
Alan J. Perlis Papers, 1942–1989

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, Minneapolis. * 1957. ''Internal Translator (IT): A Compiler for the 650''. With J. W. Smith and H. R. Van Zoeren. * * 1965. ''An introductory course in computer programming''. With Robert T. Braden. * 1970. ''A view of programming languages''. With Bernard A. Galler * 1975. ''Introduction to computer science'' * 1977
''In Praise of APL: A Language for Lyrical Programming''
* 1978

* 1981. ''Software Metrics: An Analysis and Evaluation''. With Frederick Sayward and Mary Shaw * 1986. ''FAC: A Functional APL Language''. With Tu Hai-Chen. ;About Alan Perlis * *

References

External links

Oral history interview with Allen Newell
at

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Newell discusses the development of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, including the work of Perlis and

Raj Reddy Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mello ...

, and the growth of the computer science and artificial intelligence research communities.
Alan J. Perlis Papers, 1942–1989

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis {{DEFAULTSORT:Perlis, Alan Jewish American military personnel 1922 births 1990 deaths American computer scientists Carnegie Mellon University alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Scientists from Pittsburgh Presidents of the Association for Computing Machinery Programming language designers Turing Award laureates Yale University faculty United States Army soldiers United States Army personnel of World War II Military personnel from Pittsburgh Lisp (programming language) people Computer science educators Taylor Allderdice High School alumni Jewish American scientists

Biography

Publications

See also

References

External links