Alan J. Perlis | |
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| Born | (1922-04-01)April 1, 1922 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | February 7, 1990(1990-02-07) (aged 67) New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | On Integral Equations, Their Solution by Iteration and Analytic Continuation (1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | Philip Franklin |
| Doctoral students | |
Alan Jay Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) was an Americancomputer scientist and professor atPurdue University,Carnegie Mellon University andYale University. He is best known for his pioneering work inprogramming languages and in 1966 he became the first recipient of the ACMTuring Award.[1]
Perlis was born to aJewish family inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated fromTaylor Allderdice High School in 1939.[2] In 1943, he received hisbachelor's degree inchemistry from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later renamedCarnegie Mellon University).
DuringWorld War II, he served in theU.S. Army, where he became interested in mathematics. He then earned both amaster's degree (1949) and aPh.D. (1950) inmathematics atMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His doctoral dissertation was titled "OnIntegral Equations, Their Solution by Iteration andAnalytic Continuation".
In 1952, he participated inProject Whirlwind.[3] He joined the faculty atPurdue University and in 1956, moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was chair of mathematics and then the first head of thecomputer science department. In 1962, he was elected president of theAssociation for Computing Machinery.
He was awarded the inaugural Turing Award in 1966, according to the citation, "for his influence in the area of advanced programming techniques andcompiler construction." This is a reference to the work he had done onInternal Translator in 1956 (described byDonald Knuth as the first successful compiler), and as a member of the team that developed the programming languageALGOL.
In 1971, Perlis moved toYale University to take the chair of computer science and hold the Eugene Higgins chair. In 1977, he was elected to theNational Academy of Engineering.
In 1982, he wrote an article, "Epigrams on Programming", for theAssociation for Computing Machinery's (ACM)SIGPLAN journal, describing in one-sentence distillations many of the things he had learned about programming over his career. Theepigrams have been widely quoted.[4]He remained at Yale until his death in 1990.
The epigrams are a series of short,programming-language-neutral, humorous statements about computers and programming, which are widely quoted. It first appeared inSIGPLAN Notices 17(9), September 1982. In epigram #54, Perlis coined the term "Turing tarpit", which he defined as a programming language where "everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy."
Publications, a selection:[5]
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