Edsger Dijkstra

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (May 11, 1930 - August 6, 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist.

Dijkstra studied theoretical physics at the University of Leiden. He worked as a research fellow for Burroughs Corporation in the early 1970s. He held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, in the United States. He retired in 2000.

Among his contributions to computer science are the shortest path-algorithm, also known as Dijkstra's algorithm. He received the Turing Award in 1972.

He was known for his low opinion of the GOTO statement in computer programming, culminating in the 1968 article Go To Statement Considered Harmful, regarded as a major step towards the widespread deprecation of the GOTO statement and its effective replacement by control structures such as the while loop. (The paper's famous title was not the work of Dijkstra, but of Niklaus Wirth, then editor of Communications of the ACM.) [1]

Since the 1970s, Dijkstra's chief interest was formal verification. The prevailing opinion at the time was that one should first write a program and then provide a mathematical proof of correctness. Dijkstra objected that the resulting proofs are long and cumbersome, and that the proof gives no insight as to how the program was developed. An alternative method is program derivation, to "develop proof and program hand in hand." One starts with a mathematical specification of what a program is supposed to do and applies mathematical transformations to the specification until it is turned into a program that can be executed. The resulting program is then known to be correct by construction. Much of Dijkstra's later work is about ways to streamline mathematical argument.

He died on August 6, 2002 after a long struggle with cancer.

Quotes

"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

• See also Edsger Dijkstra at Wikiquote

See also

• Dining philosophers problem

External links and references

• Wikiquote - Quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
• Edsger Wybe Dijkstra 1930-2002
  • Biography, U. of Texas
  • Biography, Digidome
• Dijkstra's algorithm
  • http://ciips.ee.uwa.edu.au/~morris/Year2/PLDS210/dijkstra.html
• Writings by E.W. Dijkstra
  • E.W. Dijkstra, Go To Statement Considered Harmful, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11 (1968) 147-148; online edition
  • Collected works

Referenced By