1930 - 2002

Photo (2)
 

These events are taken primarily from (1), a biographical sketch with photos and a Dutch flavor.

1930 May 11  Born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- father, a chemist
- mother, a mathematician
- this scientific background was a strong influence

1940 May 10
Germany invades Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxumbourg
- Rotterdam bombed for intimidation
- city center destroyed
- 800 killed

1945 May 8 Germany surrenders,  [Brief WWII Chronology]

19xx Attends Gymnasium Erasmianum (High School) in Rotterdam
- interested in a law career at the UN

1948 Enters Leyden University
- studies math and physics
- bachelors degree in three years

1951 Attends course in programming by Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge

To be continued...

Professional Honors

1972 ACM A. M. Turing Award

1981 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award, Charter Recipient.

Many others....

Notes

Selected Works of Edsger W. Dijkstra

Ole-Johan Dahl, Edsger W. Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare, Structured Programming (Academic Press, 1972).

Edsger W. Dijkstra. Go To Statement Considered Harmful. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 3, March 1968, pp. 147-148.

Edsger W. Dijkstra, "Notes on Structured Programming," Chap. 1 in Structured Programming (Academic Press, 1972).

Edsger W. Dijkstra. The Structure of "THE"-Multiprogramming System. Communication of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 5 May 1968, pp. 345-346. This paper is about structuring the THE multiprogramming system as a hierarchy of abstract machines. The appendix describes the use of "semaphores" to synchronize parallel sequential processes.

EWD Manuscripts

EWD 1000 Twenty-eight years. 11 January 1987, Austin, TX.

EWD 1298 Under the spell of Leibniz's Dream. 22 April 2000, Austin, TX.

EWD 1303 My recollections of operating system design. October 2000/April 2001, Austin, TX.

1. Edsger Wybe Dijkstra.  http://www.digidome.nl/edsger_wybe_dijkstra.htm, November 30, 2002.  From Digidome: museum for the roaring digital history.  This biography includes technical and some personal aspects of his life, and it includes a nice collection of photographs.

2. In Pursuit of Simplicity: the manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/, November 30, 2002. Department of Computer Sciences, The Universtiy of Texas at Austin. This site contains many of the writings of Edsger Dijkstra. It includes the program of the symposium that was held on his birthday in May 2002 celebrating his over forty years of contributions to computing. The site also contains most of his famous EWD manuscripts.

Bibliography

Krzysztof R. Apt, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002): A Portrait of a Genius. In Formal Aspects of Computing, October 2002.

Robert S. Boyer, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, 11 May 1930 -- 6 August 2002. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/obituary.html, November 30, 2002. From In Pursuit of Simplicity: the manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra, Department of Computer Sciences, The Universtiy of Texas at Austin. This obituary was drafted by Robert S. Boyer and editted by many others including Ham Richards, Tony Hoare, Jay Misra and David Gries. (Personal communication from Boyer.)

J Strother Moore, Remarks at the Funeral of Edsger W. Dijkstra. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/JSMremarks.html, November 30, 2002. From In Pursuit of Simplicity: the manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra, Department of Computer Sciences, The Universtiy of Texas at Austin.