Ken Kennedy | |
|---|---|
 Ken Kennedy (2001 photo) | |
| Born | (1945-08-12)August 12, 1945 |
| Died | February 7, 2007(2007-02-07) (aged 61) |
| Alma mater | Rice University New York University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer sciences |
| Institutions | Rice University |
| Doctoral advisor | Jacob T. Schwartz |
| Doctoral students | |
Ken Kennedy (August 12, 1945 – February 7, 2007) was an Americancomputer scientist andprofessor atRice University. He was the founding chairman of Rice's Computer Science Department.[1][2]
Kennedy directed the construction of several substantialsoftware systems for programmingparallelcomputers, including anautomatic vectorizer forFortran 77, an integrated scientific programming environment,compilers forFortran 90 andHigh Performance Fortran, and a compilation system for domain languages based on the numerical computing environmentMATLAB.
He wrote over 200 articles and book chapters, plus numerous conference addresses.[2] Kennedy was elected to theNational Academy of Engineering in 1990. He was named a Fellow of theAAAS in 1994 and of theACM andIEEE in 1995. In recognition of his achievements in compilation for high performance computer systems, he was honored as the recipient of the 1995W. W. McDowell Award, the highest research award of theIEEE Computer Society. From 1997 to 1999, he served as co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). In 1999, he was named recipient of the ACMSIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award, the third time this award was given. In 2005, he was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Kennedy died ofpancreatic cancer inHouston at the age of 61.[3] At the time of his death he was theJohn and Ann Doerr University Professor in the department ofComputer Science atRice and the Director of the Center for High Performance Software Research (HiPerSoft). As of November 20, 2006, he had directed the PhD dissertations of 38 graduate students and masters theses for 8 students.[2]
Kennedy's last publication wasThe rise and fall of High Performance Fortran: an historical object lesson,[4] in which Kennedy discussed the general failure of theHigh Performance Fortran language which he had championed.
On November 18, 2009, theACM andIEEEawarded the firstKen Kennedy CS Award[5]toFrancine Berman ofRensselaer Polytechnic Institute.The award was given at the ACM IEEESupercomputing (or, "SC") '09 conference.[6]
