{"id":307685,"date":"2006-10-17T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=307685"},"modified":"2016-10-19T00:36:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T07:36:19","slug":"computing-industry-bestows-rare-honor-upon-hoare-lampson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/computing-industry-bestows-rare-honor-upon-hoare-lampson\/","title":{"rendered":"Computing Industry Bestows Rare Honor upon Hoare, Lampson"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n

One has spent his professional career exploring programming language theory. The other has made fundamental contributions to PC networks, operating systems, security, and document publishing.<\/p>\n

One works in Cambridge, U.K. The other works in Cambridge, Mass.<\/p>\n

\"tonyBut Tony Hoare and Butler Lampson<\/a> have a couple of things in common: Both work for Microsoft Research, and both were named fellows of the Computer History Museum<\/a> during an awards dinner and ceremony<\/a> Oct. 17 in Mountain View, Calif.<\/p>\n

The evening included many of the leading lights of the technology world, gathered \u201cto honor and celebrate the people and innovations that paved the way for their own advancements and position in the history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoare and Lampson join Robert Kahn, networking pioneer, and Marvin Minsky, co-founder of the field of artificial intelligence, as members of the museum\u2019s Hall of Fellows, class of 2006.<\/p>\n

All four have something rare indeed: an A.M. Turing Award<\/a>. Each has captured that honor, bestowed by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and considered computer science\u2019s most prestigious accolade. Minsky won the Turing in 1969, Hoare in 1980, Lampson in 1992, and Kahn in 2004.<\/p>\n

For the Microsoft Research honorees, the Fellow Award represents a special achievement.<\/p>\n

\"Butler\u201cIt\u2019s a pleasure,\u201d said Lampson, a Microsoft technical fellow, \u201cto join the distinguished company of Computer History Museum fellows, which includes many of the great names in computer science and engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoare, who said he was \u201csurprised and happy, especially since Butler joins me in the honor,\u201d echoed Lampson\u2019s delight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means,\u201d said Hoare, a principal researcher in the Programming Principles and Tools group<\/a> at Microsoft Research\u2019s U.K.-based Cambridge lab<\/a>, \u201cthat the importance of early ideas and discoveries in software is recognized in a museum which has a truly outstanding collection of hardware.\u201d<\/p>\n

The class of 2006 increases the roster of Computer History Museum fellows to 40, including another member of Microsoft Research, Gordon Bell<\/a>, a San Francisco-based principal researcher for Microsoft Research Silicon Valley. Bell, named a museum fellow in 2003, is a founding board member of the museum.<\/p>\n

Hoare was humble in explaining his selection for the honor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been around for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cI started when so many things were new. It was not so difficult to make a recognized contribution as it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s Web site was not bound by such modesty, citing Hoare\u2019s \u201cdevelopment of the Quicksort algorithm and lifetime contributions to the theory of programming languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout much of the 1960s and \u201870s,\u201d states the museum\u2019s biography of Hoare, \u201ca central concern among computer scientists was a \u2018software crisis\u2019 caused by the increasing complexity of computer software and systems. This inspired Hoare, who moved [from Queen\u2019s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland] to the University of Oxford in 1977, to devise a system of logical rules (now known as \u2018Hoare Logic\u2019) that any programmer could follow, in the process helping to move the writing of software from a somewhat mystical discipline into a field with solid foundations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoare, who devised Quicksort in 1959 while studying machine translation of languages in Moscow, also was integral in creating the Z specification language and the CSP concurrent programming model. More recently, he has been working with long-term research colleague He Jifeng on unifying theories of programming.<\/p>\n

The author of hundreds of papers over the years, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000. That\u2019s right\u2014officially, he is known as Sir Tony Hoare. But expect no pretension from this pioneer; asked about his proudest achievement, he recalls enlightening others:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my 22 years as professor at Oxford University, I recruited excellent research colleagues and started the teaching of computing at undergraduate and graduate levels and also a professional in-service degree course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lampson, in addition to his role with Microsoft Research, is an adjunct professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He cites his work on the Alto system, a prototype for modern networked PCs with their graphical user interfaces that was developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, as both the reason why has was named a Computer History Museum fellow and as the proudest accomplishment in a long, extraordinary career.<\/p>\n

The museum Web site notes that Lampson\u2019s career \u201ccovers a remarkable range of topics, including computer architecture, local area networks, raster printers, page description languages, operating systems, programming languages and their semantics, fault-tolerant computing, transaction processing, computer security, and WYSIWYG editors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is,\u201d the site understates, \u201calso widely admired as a technical leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his latest honor, Lampson has won the ACM Software Systems Award, the Computer Pioneer Award and the von Neumann Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, as well as the National Academy of Engineering\u2019s Draper Prize.<\/p>\n

But, as he mentioned, his work on the Alto is explicitly called out on the museum Web site, in addition to his work on the Ethernet local area network, an Ethernet encryption system, the Bravo text editor, the Interpress page description language, and \u201cdozens of groundbreaking computer architectures and systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Computer History Museum is the world\u2019s largest, most highly regarded repository for preserving and presenting the computing revolution and its impact. Microsoft is one of three Fellows Sponsors for the Fellow Awards.<\/p>\n

Included among the biographical information the museum Web site includes about each recipient is a pertinent quote from the honoree. Hoare\u2019s:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research One has spent his professional career exploring programming language theory. The other has made fundamental contributions to PC networks, operating systems, security, and document publishing. One works in Cambridge, U.K. The other works in Cambridge, Mass. But Tony Hoare and Butler Lampson have a couple of things in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194488],"tags":[194534,201053,215687,203155,215684,215681,186414],"research-area":[13560],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-307685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-program-languages-and-software-engineering","tag-a-m-turing-award","tag-computer-history-museum","tag-document-publishing","tag-operating-systems","tag-pc-networks","tag-programming-language-theory","tag-security","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[199561],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"October 17, 2006","formattedExcerpt":"By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research One has spent his professional career exploring programming language theory. The other has made fundamental contributions to PC networks, operating systems, security, and document publishing. One works in Cambridge, U.K. The other works in Cambridge, Mass. But Tony…","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307685"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308714,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307685\/revisions\/308714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=307685"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=307685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}