Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939 as Barbara Jane Huberman) is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to

programming languages 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 ...

and

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

. Her notable work includes the development of the Liskov substitution principle which describes the fundamental nature of data abstraction, and is used in

type theory In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theory as a fou ...

(see

subtyping In programming language theory, subtyping (also subtype polymorphism or inclusion polymorphism) is a form of type polymorphism in which a subtype is a datatype that is related to another datatype (the supertype) by some notion of substitutability, ...

) and in

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

(see

inheritance Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officia ...

). Her work was recognized with the 2008

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 comput ...

, the highest distinction in computer science. Liskov is one of the earliest women to have been granted a doctorate in computer science in the United States, and the second woman to receive the Turing award. She is currently an

Institute Professor An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

and Ford Professor of Engineering at the

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 the ...

.Barbara Liskov
Programming Methodology Group, MIT.

Early life and education

Liskov was born November 7, 1939, in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish family, the eldest of Jane (née Dickhoff) and Moses Huberman's four children. She earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics with a minor in physics at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1961. She had only one other female classmate. After she graduated she applied to graduate mathematics programs at Berkeley and

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

. At the time Princeton was not accepting female students in mathematics. She was accepted at Berkeley but instead of studying she moved to Boston and began working at Mitre Corporation. It was there that she became interested in computers and programming. She worked at Mitre for one year before taking a programming job at Harvard where she worked on language translation. She then decided to go back to school and applied again to Berkeley, but also to Stanford and Harvard. In 1968 she became one of the first women in the United States to be awarded a Ph.D. from a computer science department when she was awarded her degree from Stanford University. At Stanford, she worked with John McCarthy and was supported to work in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis was a computer program to play

chess endgame In chess and other similar games, the endgame (or end game or ending) is the stage of the game when few pieces are left on the board. The line between middlegame and endgame is often not clear, and may occur gradually or with the quick exchange ...

s for which she developed the important

killer heuristic In competitive two-player games, the killer heuristic is a move-ordering method based on the observation that a strong move or small set of such moves in a particular position may be equally strong in similar positions at the same move (ply) in t ...

Career

After graduating from Stanford, Liskov returned to Mitre to work as research staff. Liskov has led many significant projects, including the Venus operating system, a small, low-cost timesharing system; the design and implementation of CLU; Argus, the first high-level language to support implementation of distributed programs and to demonstrate the technique of promise pipelining; and Thor, an

object-oriented database An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which are ...

system. With

Jeannette Wing Jeannette Marie Wing is Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, where she is also a professor of computer science. Until June 30, 2017, she was Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research with oversight of i ...

, she developed a particular definition of

, commonly known as the Liskov substitution principle. She leads the Programming Methodology Group at

MIT 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 the m ...

, with a current research focus in Byzantine fault tolerance and

. She was on the inaugural Engineering and Computer Science jury for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to r ...

in 2009.

Recognition and awards

Liskov is a member of 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 ...

, the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

and of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 2002, she was recognized as one of the top women faculty members at MIT, and among the top 50 faculty members in the sciences in the U.S. In 2002, ''

Discover Discover may refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''Discover'' (album), a Cactus Jack album * ''Discover'' (magazine), an American science magazine Businesses and brands * DISCover, the ''Digital Interactive Systems Corporation'' * D ...

'' magazine recognized Liskov as one of the 50 most important women in science. In 2004, Barbara Liskov won the

John von Neumann Medal The IEEE John von Neumann Medal was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1990 and may be presented annually "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology." The achievements may be theoretical, technological, or ...

for "fundamental contributions to programming languages, programming methodology, and

distributed systems A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

". On 19 November 2005, Barbara Liskov and

Donald E. 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 ...

were awarded

ETH (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

Honorary Doctorates. Liskov and Knuth were also featured in the ETH Zurich Distinguished Colloquium Series. She was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the

University of Lugano A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

in 2011 and by

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, UPM) is a public university, located in Madrid, Spain. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Te ...

in 2018. Liskov received the 2008

from the ACM in March 2009, for her work in the design of programming languages and software methodology that led to the development of

.Barbara Liskov Wins Turing Award , March 10, 2009
from the Dr. Dobb's Journal website Specifically, Liskov developed two programming languages, CLU in the 1970s and Argus in the 1980s. The ACM cited her contributions to the practical and theoretical foundations of "programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction,

fault tolerance Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

, and

". In 2012 she was inducted into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...

Selected works

Liskov is the author of four books and over one hundred technical papers.

Books

* * * *

Selected papers

* * * * * *

Personal life

In 1970, she married Nathan Liskov. They have one son, Moses, who earned a PhD in computer science from MIT in 2004 and teaches computer science at the

College of William and Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III ...

References

External links

Prof. Liskov's home page

Programming Methodology Group

Interview in Quanta magazine
*

Tom Van Vleck Tom Van Vleck is an American computer software engineer. Life and work Van Vleck graduated from MIT in 1965 with a BS in Mathematics. He worked on CTSS at MIT, and co-authored its first email program with Noel Morris. In 1965, he joined Proje ...

Barbara Liskov
A.M. Turing Award Winner
National Public Radio "Science Friday" interview with Barbara Liskov, originally aired on 13 Mar 2009
*
Celebrating Women of Distinction, Barbara Liskov, Turing Award interview by
Stephen Ibaraki * Prof. Liskov summarizes her career and offers advice to young women engineers
--> * John V. Guttag
Barbara Liskov
''The Electron and The Bit: EECS at MIT, 1902–2002'', Chapter VII: "Pioneering Women in EECS", pp. 225–239, 2003, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Barbara Liskov named Institute Professor
MIT News, July 1, 2008
Department News: Barbara Liskov named Institute Professor
, EECS Newsletter, Fall 2008 * Natasha Plotkin

''The Tech'' (MIT), 128,29, July 9, 2008 * Robert Weisman
Top prize in computing goes to MIT professor
''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', March 10, 2009 * Erica Naone
Driven to Abstraction
''MIT Technology Review'', December 21, 2009
Barbara Liskov
at the Chess programming wiki {{DEFAULTSORT:Liskov, Barbara University of California, Berkeley alumni Programming language designers American women computer scientists American computer scientists 1939 births Living people American women academics Programming language researchers Researchers in distributed computing Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Turing Award laureates MIT School of Engineering faculty Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Jewish American scientists Jewish women scientists 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists Women inventors