[Colloq] Kristen Nygaard (Turing Award), Thursday, April 18, 50 Dodge, 12:00 noon

[David H. Lorenz]

The College of Computer Science presents:

Kristen Nygaard
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

who will speak on:
"How the basic concepts in object-oriented programming were developed"

Thursday, April 18, 2002
12:00 noon
50 Dodge Hall
Northeastern University

About the speaker:
Kristen Nygaard invented object-oriented programming together with Ole-Johan
Dahl at the Norwegian Computing Center.

Below you will find the ACM Press Release about the Turing award that Kristen
Nygaard will receive in Toronto on 27 April 2002.


          COMPUTING'S HIGHEST HONOR AWARDED TO INVENTORS OF
                      DOMINANT PROGRAMMING STYLE

      Norwegian Team Developed Concepts for Software Now in Home
                        Entertainment Devices

New York, February 5, 2002...The Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM) has presented the 2001 A.M. Turing Award, considered the "Nobel
Prize of Computing," to Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard of Norway
for their role in the invention of object-oriented programming, the
most widely used programming model today. Their work has led to a
fundamental change in how software systems are designed and
programmed, resulting in reusable, reliable, scalable applications
that have streamlined the process of writing software code and
facilitated software programming. Current object-oriented programming
languages include C++ and Java, both widely used in programming a wide
range of applications from large-scale distributed systems to small,
personal applications, including personal computers, home
entertainment devices, and standalone arcade applications. The
A.M.Turing Award carries a $25,000 prize.

The discrete event simulation language (Simula I) and general
programming language (Simula 67) developed by Dahl and Nygaard at the
Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, Norway in the 1960's, led the way
for software programmers to build software systems in layers of
abstraction. With this approach, each layer of a system relies on a
platform implemented by the lower layers. Their approach has resulted
in programming that is both accessible and available to the entire
research community.

"The work of Drs. Dahl and Nygaard has been instrumental in developing
a remarkably responsive programming model that is both flexible and
agile when it is applied to complex software design and
implementation," said John R. White, executive director and CEO of
ACM. "It is the dominant style for implementing programs with large
numbers of interacting components." The awards committee noted that
the core concepts embodied in their object-oriented methods were
designed for both system description and programming and provided not
just a logical but a notational basis for their ideas. The benefits of
their work are not limited to software but are applicable to business
processes as well.

Drs. Dahl and Nygaard are professors (emeriti) of informatics at the
University of Oslo. They developed their object-oriented programming
concepts at the Norwegian Computing Center from 1961-67. Professor
Nygaard was involved in large-scale simulation studies at the
Norwegian Defense Research Establishment from 1949-60. He continued
his work on object-orientation, and did research on systems
development, participative system design, and societal consequences of
information technology. With Danish colleagues, he invented Beta, a
general object-oriented language.

Professor Dahl also worked at the Norwegian Defense Research
Establishment, and joined the Simula project as an experienced
designer and implementer of basic software as well as high level
programming language. In 1968, Dahl became the first professor of
informatics at the University of Oslo, responsible for establishing
research and education programs in this rapidly expanding field. His
focus on computer program verification led to the development of his
theory of constructive types and subtypes based on computer-aided
concept formation and reasoning.

ACM will present the A.M. Turing Award, its most prestigious technical
honor, at the annual ACM Awards Banquet April 27, 2002, at the
University of Toronto. The award was named for A. M. Turing, a pioneer
in the computing field. Financial support for the award is provided by
InterTrust Technologies Corp.'s Strategic Technologies and
Architectural Research Laboratory.

About ACM
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in
advancing the skills of information technology professionals and
students. ACM serves its global membership by delivering cutting edge
technical information and transferring ideas from theory to practice.
ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Portal to Computing
Literature. With its world-class journals and magazines, dynamic
special interest groups, numerous conferences, workshops and
electronic forums, ACM is a primary resource to the information
technology field. For additional information about ACM and the ACM
Portal, see www.acm.org.

-- 
David H. Lorenz, Assistant Professor                    (617) 373-2076
111 Cullinane Hall, College of Computer Science,    lorenz@ccs.neu.edu
Northeastern University, Boston MA 02115   www.ccs.neu.edu/home/lorenz