Richard Craig Holt (February 13, 1941 – April 12, 2019) was an American-

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

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 ...

Early life

Holt was born in 1941, in

Bartlesville, Oklahoma Bartlesville is a city mostly in Washington County and Osage County, Oklahoma. The population was 37,290 at the 2020 census. Bartlesville is north of Tulsa and south of the Kansas border. It is the county seat of Washington County. The Cane ...

, to Vashti Young and C.P. Holt, but later moved to

Toronto, Canada Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

. As a teenager, he competed in track and field. He graduated from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

in 1964 in

engineering physics Engineering physics (EP), sometimes engineering science, is the field of study combining pure science disciplines (such as physics, mathematics, chemistry or biology) and engineering disciplines (computer, nuclear, electrical, aerospace, medic ...

. He spent a year in the

Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an Independent agency of the U.S. government, independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to communities in partner countries around the world. It was established in Marc ...

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

, and then worked for

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

. He went back to Cornell and obtained a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

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

in 1970 under Alan Shaw.

Career

Holt joined the faculty at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

in 1970. In 1997, he joined the faculty of the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

, where he remained until his retirement in 2014. Holt's main research areas were

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

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

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

, contributing many seminal results to each. His work includes foundational work on

deadlock Deadlock commonly refers to: * Deadlock (computer science), a situation where two processes are each waiting for the other to finish * Deadlock (locksmithing) or deadbolt, a physical door locking mechanism * Political deadlock or gridlock, a si ...

, development of several

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

s and compilation techniques. His Turing programming language was used in universities and high schools in Canada and internationally. He also participated in the development of the Grok,

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

, SP/k, and S/SL programming languages. For many years, he ran a software company, Holt Software Associates (HSA), which created the Ready to Program environment still widely used in Canadian High Schools to teach programming. Holt served as president of Gravel Watch Ontario from 2003 until 2015. In the fall of 2005, he was named #16 on Computing Canada's list of top 30

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

movers and shakers in the country for the past 30 years. In 2017, Holt was awarded the OS-CAN/INFO-CAN Lifetime Achievement Award.

Death

Holt died on April 12, 2019, on Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada at the age of 78. He had

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a neurodegenerative disease primarily of the central nervous system, affecting both motor system, motor and non-motor systems. Symptoms typically develop gradually and non-motor issues become ...

and

Lewy body dementia Lewy body dementia (LBD) is an umbrella term for two similar and common subtypes of dementia: dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD). Both are characterized by changes in thinking, movement, behavior, and mood. The ...

in his later years.

Ric Holt Early Career Achievement Award

In 2019 the Mining Software Repositories conference, the flagship conference in the area of repository mining that has been co-founded by Ric Holt, has established the Ric Holt Early Career Achievement Award. The first awardees are Emad Shihab (2019; Concordia University), Alberto Bacchelli (2020; University of Zurich) and Bogdan Vasilescu (2021; Carnegie Mellon University).

References

External links