William Allan Wulf (December 8, 1939 – March 10, 2023) was an Americancomputer scientist notable for his work inprogramming languages andcompilers.

Born in Chicago, Wulf attended theUniversity of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, receiving aBachelor of Science (B.S.) inengineering physics in 1961 and aMaster of Science (M.S.) inelectrical engineering in 1963. He then achieved the firstDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) incomputer science from theUniversity of Virginia in 1968.

In 1970, while atCarnegie Mellon University (CMU), he designed theBLISS programming language and developed anoptimizing compiler for it.

From 1971 to 1975, as part of CMUsC.mmp project, he worked on anoperating system (OS)microkernel namedHydra which iscapability-based,object-oriented, and designed to support a wide range of possible OSs to run on it.

With his wifeAnita K. Jones, Wulf was a founder and vice president ofTartan Laboratories, acompiler technology company, in 1981.

Wulf served as president of theNational Academy of Engineering^[1] from 1996 to 2007. He chaired the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of theNational Research Council from 1992 to 1996. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Director of the US National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate from 1988-1990. During this time, he played a major role in making the NSFnet computer network (as it was known at that time) available to the public as the Internet, for which he received the ACM Policy Award in 2017.^[2] He served on the Council of theACM, on the board of directors ofCRDF Global,^[3] and was a reviewing editor ofScience. In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM. In 2007 Wulf was awarded the honor of delivering the prestigiousCharles P. Steinmetz Lecture atUnion College.^[4] He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society that same year.^[5]

Wulf's research also includedcomputer architecture,computer security, andhardware-software codesign.

Wulf ended his career at the University of Virginia by resigning on Tuesday, June 19, 2012, in protest of the forced resignation of former PresidentTeresa A. Sullivan,^[6] in what he called, "the worst example of corporate governance I have ever seen.^{[7][8][9][10]} After widespread challenges from the faculty, student body, alumni, and the national academic community; and in the face of a direct threat from the Governor of Virginia that he would replace the entire board if they did not resolve the conflict, Sullivan was unanimously rehired some two weeks later.^[11]

Wulf was married toAnita K. Jones, an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at theUniversity of Virginia.

William Wulf died inCharlottesville, Virginia, on March 10, 2023, at the age of 83.^[12][13]

• Wulf, W. A., "Programming Without the GOTO",Proceedings of the Internationale Federation of Information Processing, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, August 1971.
• Wulf, W. A., et al., "Reflections on a Systems Programming Language",Proceedings of the SIGPLAN Symposium on System Implementation Languages, Purdue University, October 1971.
• McCredie, J., Wulf, W. A., "The Selection of a Computing Alternative",Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Conference, IEEE, Boston, September 1971.
• Wulf, W. A., "A Case Against the GOTO",Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, ACM, Boston, August 1972.
• Wulf, W. A., and Shaw, M., "Global Variables Considered Harmful",SIGPLAN Notices 8(2), February 1973.
• Wulf, W. A., Shaw, M., Hilfinger, P. N., and Flon, L.,Fundamental Structures of Computer Science Addison-Wesley, 1980.
• Wulf, W. A., Johnson, R., Weinstock, C., Hobbs, S., and Geschke, C.,The Design of an Optimizing Compiler American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975.
• Shaw, M. and Wulf, W., "Tyrannical Languages Still Preempt System Design",Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Languages, April 1992.

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• William A. Wulf personal webpage
• William Wulf - University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science

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