Barbara Liskov

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939) is an American computer scientist and professor.[1] She developed two programming languages, CLU and Argus.[2] They are used in almost every modern programming language.[2][3] She earned the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Turing Award.[1]

Early life[change | change source]

Barbara Liskov was born in Los Angeles, California.[1] She got her BA in mathematics at UC Berkeley.[2] After she graduated in 1961, she went to work at the Mitre Corporation.[1] After a year, Liskov moved to Harvard and worked on computer translation of human languages. [2] In 1968, she moved back to California and received her PhD in computer science at Stanford University. [2]

Career[change | change source]

Liskov went to work at the Mitre Corporation, in Bedford, Massachusetts.[1] She worked on computer design and operating systems.[2] During that time, she created the Venus Computer, which was specially created to support complex software.[2] In 1971, she took a position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she started her work with data abstraction.[2] She thought of writing computer code like doing a math problem, not a technology problem.[4] She wanted to use logic and have the language look beautiful.[4] She developed two programming languages, CLU and Argus.[2] They are used in almost every modern programming language.[2][3] She later published Abstraction and Specification in Program Development (1986) and Program Development in Java: Abstraction, Specification, and Object-Oriented Design (2001).[2] In 2008, Liskov won the A.M. Turing Award.[1]

References[change | change source]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Barbara Liskov | Biography, A.M. Turing Award, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2024-02-09.
  2. 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 "Barbara Liskov - A.M. Turing Award Laureate". amturing.acm.org. Retrieved 2024-02-09.
  3. 3.0 3.1 "NIHF Inductee Barbara Liskov Invented Computer Programming Languages". www.invent.org. 2024-03-22. Retrieved 2024-03-22.
  4. 4.0 4.1 "The Architect of Modern Algorithms: Barbara Liskov pioneered the modern approach to writing code". Quanta Magazine. 2019-11-20.