Fran Allen Wins Turing Award

shoemortgage writes "The Association for Computing Machinery has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen,74, is the first woman to receive the Turing Award in the 41 years of its history. She retired from IBM in 2002."

Re:Ironic

[skoaldipper]

She [ibm.com] is the real deal alright.

Re:Never heard of her before

[DevStar]

Actually my first response was "Finally!". I think the surprise exhibited by most people on Slashdot has more to do with the level of actual CS sophistication on Slashdot than it does anything else (which is consistently displayed on almost anything related to CS). Her work on program analysis and program transformation has completely changed the field in the same way that Codd changed databases or Thompson changed systems.
Also, RIP Ken Kennedy. Another true star in the field.

Re:Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFPR

"Allen's 1966 paper, Program Optimization, laid the conceptual basis for systematic analysis and transformation of computer programs. Her 1970 papers, Control Flow Analysis and A Basis for Program Optimization established "intervals" as the context for efficient and effective data flow analysis and optimization. Much of her early work was done in collaboration with John Cocke, an IBM computer scientist who died in 2002. Her 1971 paper with John Cocke, A Catalog of Optimizing Transformations, provided the first description and systematization of optimizing transformations. She developed and implemented her methods as part of building compilers for the IBM STRETCH-HARVEST and the experimental Advanced Computing System. This work established the feasibility of modern machine- and language-independent optimizers."

Taking the test

[Per Abrahamsen]

I'll take it as a challenge, and see how many names I recognize without looking them up.
2005 Naur, Peter: The N of BNF, even if he prefer the N to stand for "Normal". He is most known here for mandating the use of Danish translations of computer terms when he worked at DIKU.

2004 Cerf, Vinton G. 2004 Kahn, Robert E: Someone in Al Gore's staff.

2003 Kay, Alan: Always talking about nothing at all,

2002 Adleman, Leonard M. 2002 Rivest, Ronald L. 2002 Shamir, Adi: Adleman should be last, I would not recognize the names individually.

2001 Dahl, Ole-Johan 2001 Nygaard, Kristen: I'll simulate knowledge of then one, if you get the message.

2000 Yao, Andrew Chi-Chih 1999 Brooks, Frederick P. 1998 Gray, James: Dunno

1997 Engelbart, Douglas: Just some wimp.

1996 Pnueli, Amir 1995 Blum, Manuel 1994 Feigenbaum, Edward 1994 Reddy, Raj 1993 Hartmanis, Juris 1993 Stearns, Richard E. 1992 Lampson, Butler W.: Dunno

1991 Milner, Robin: Something with semantics...

1990 Corbato, Fernando J. 1989 Kahan, William (Velvel) 1988 Sutherland, Ivan 1987 Cocke, John 1986 Hopcroft, John 1986 Tarjan, Robert 1985 Karp, Richard M.: Dunno.

1984 Wirth, Niklaus: You can call him by value; or you can call him by name.

1983 Ritchie, Dennis M. 1983 Thompson, Ken: Doug McIllroy should have been there.

1982 Cook, Stephen A. 1981 Codd, Edgar F.: Dunno.

1980 Hoare, C. Antony R. : More formalisms.

1979 Iverson, Kenneth E. 1978 Floyd, Robert W : Dunno

1977 Backus, John: SOME WORK ON AUTOMATED FORMULA TRANSLATION.

1976 Rabin, Michael O. 1976 Scott, Dana S. 1975 Newell, Allen 1975 Simon, Herbert A.: Dunno

1974 Knuth, Donald E. : Worst case of "to write the perfect thesis, you must find the perfect pen" EVER.

1973 Bachman, Charles W.: Dunno.

1972 Dijkstra, E. W.: How to GOTO along the shortest path. He don't like Wirthless, so I like him.

1971 McCarthy, John: (when (version 2.0) 'ready-p)

1970 Wilkinson, J. H.: Dunno.

1969 Minsky, Marvin: Not half as smart as his computer.

1968 Hamming, Richard 1967 Wilkes, Maurice V 1966 Perlis, A. J.: Dunno.

--

Summary: 22 dunno's and 15 knowns (by year), so I guess you are right that I shouldn't expect to recognize the name. They do all have Wikipedia pages [wikipedia.org], but of course these might be written *because* they received the award. From the descriptions there, a handful of the "dunno" invented something I recognize (which is almost like recognizing them), but the rest just "made contributions to" which is more difficult to judge.

Re:Taking the test

[lakeland]

You did roughly as well as me. Here were a few I happened to recognise you missed:

1999, brooks is the mythical man
1996, something in compiler (langauge) theory from memory. Program proofs?
1981, You'll curse yourself for forgetting if I tell you - easy one.
1980, was Tony Hoare's Turing award for formalisms? I thought it was more prgamatic. Though of course he does do a lot of formalism stuff too)
1975, didn't he found expert systems in AI?
1974, beautiful description! Though I've almsot stopped using TeX myself.
1968, see 1981