In our Retrobituaries serial , we highlight interesting masses who are no longer with us . Today let ’s explore the life history of Edsger Dijkstra , who conk out at 72 in 2002 .
If you ’ve used a estimator or chic phone in the last few decades , you ’ve arrive into contact lens with the body of work of Edsger Dijkstra . Since his destruction in 2002 , his inquiry in the playing field of computer science has in many direction only grown more important . Here are a few thing you did n’t roll in the hay about his life and his scientific discipline .
If you took his computer science class, you probably didn’t touch a computer.
Professor Dijkstra once say , “ computing machine science is no more about computers than uranology is about telescope , ” and he learn his courses accordingly . He was a advocator of elegance in numerical proof , whereby mystifier are solved with efficiency and aesthetic sensitivity .
Grades were mold by the last exam , which was neither written on a piece of paper nor typed on a computer . Rather , students were throw item-by-item oral examinations in his federal agency or at his home . The conversational exams lasted hours at a time , and students were require how they might turn up various mathematical proposition . They were then challenged to write out their validation on a blackboard . After the exam , students were offer a beer if they were of long time , or a cup of tea leaf , if they were not .
He didn’t use email. Or a word processor.
Dijkstra was famous for his ecumenical rejection of personal computers . Instead of typewrite papers out using a Son processor , he print everything in cursive script . He wrote well over a thousand essays of substantial length this elbow room , and for most of his academic life history , they proliferated by ditto mark machine and fax . Each essay was given a number and prefix with his initial , EWD .
bookman who emailed Dijkstra were postulate to include a physical mailing address in the letter of the alphabet . His secretaire would print the substance , and he would respond by hired hand .
Computers were n’t the only engineering science he shunned . He refused to use overhead projectors , calling them “ the poisonous substance of the educational cognitive operation . ”
apply Google Maps ? you may thank Dijkstra .
Among his profound contributions to computer skill is a resolution to the “ single source shortest - path problem . ” The solvent , generally referred to asDijkstra ’s algorithm , reckon the little aloofness between a origin lymph gland and a address thickening on a graph . ( Hereis a optical representation . ) The upshot is that if you ’ve ever used Google Maps , you ’re using a derivation of Dijkstra ’s algorithm . Similarly , the algorithm is used for communication connection and airline flight plans .
He “owned” a nonexistent company.
In many of his more humorous essays , he described a fictional company of which he serve well as chairman . The company was calledMathematics , Inc. , and sell numerical theorem and their care . Among the company ’s great triumph was proving the Riemann hypothesis ( which it renamed the Mathematics , Inc. Theorem ) , and then it unsuccessfully attempted to collect royalties on all uses of the mathematical conjecture in the tangible world . Evidence was never given of the substantiation , of trend , because it was a trade mystery . Mathematics Inc. claim to have a global market parcel of 75 per centum .
He was the first programmer in the Netherlands.
In the fifties , his Father of the Church suggested that he take care a Cambridge course on programming an Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator , or EDSAC . Dijkstra did , believing that theoretic natural philosophy ( which he was study at the time at Leiden University ) might one day rely upon computers . The following year , he was offer a job at Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam , making him the first individual in the Netherlands to be employed as something called a “ coder . ” ( “ A software engineer ? ” he recall of the here and now he was proffer the position . “ But was that a goodly profession ? For after all , what was programming ? Where was the sound soundbox of knowledge that could support it as an intellectually respectable discipline ? ” He was then challenged by his eventual employer to make it a respectable subject area . )
This would afterwards make job . On his marriage software program in 1957 , he was postulate to list his professing . Officials reject his answer—”Programmer”—stating that there was no such task .
antecedently on Retrobituaries : Albert Ellis , Pioneering Psychologist . See all Retrobituarieshere .
