Robert W Floyd ( eng. Robert W Floyd , June 8, 1936 , New York , USA - September 25, 2001 , Stanford , USA ) is an American scientist in the theory of computer systems. Turing Award Winner. Floyd changed his middle name, which began with the letter W, to the letter itself, so there is no dot after it. Floyd himself joked about this, that “W.” is an acceptable abbreviation for “W” [1] .
| Robert In Floyd | |
|---|---|
| Robert W Floyd | |
 Floyd in 1976 | |
| Date of Birth | June 8, 1936 |
| Place of Birth | New York |
| Date of death | September 25, 2001 (aged 65) |
| Place of death | Stanford |
| A country |  USA |
| Scientific field | Computer science |
| Place of work | Carnegie University - Mellon Stanford University |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Known as | Floyd-Warshell Algorithm |
| Awards and prizes | Guggenheim Fellowship Turing Award ( 1978 ) Pioneer of computer technology ( 1991 ) [d] ( 1994 ) [d] |
Biography
Robert graduated from school at the age of 14, jumping over three classes. Three years later, in 1953 , he received the bachelor's degree in liberal science from the University of Chicago , and in 1958 he received the bachelor's degree in physics . At the age of 27, Floyd became an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University , and another six years later became a professor at Stanford . It is noteworthy that, unlike most colleagues, Floyd did not have the title PhD (Ph.D.) . Twice married, twice divorced, had four children. Floyd's second wife was an Austrian computer scientist, Christiane Floyd , who was married to Peter Naur [2] .
Floyd's famous achievements include an efficient algorithm for finding the shortest path in directed graphs ( Floyd-Warshell algorithm ) and an erosion algorithm ( Floyd-Steinberg algorithm ). In addition, Floyd worked on the problem of formal verification of programs, thereby making a large contribution to the Hoar logic , which is sometimes called the Floyd- Hoar logic [2] [3] .
At Stanford, Floyd worked closely with Donald Knuth , including as the editor-in-chief of a series of his famous books “The Art of Programming ”, which became the fundamental source of information on the development of algorithms [1] . Together, they supported a student protest on May 1, 1970 , directed against Nixon ’s decision to send US troops to Cambodia . The purpose of the action was to hinder the work of university employees, but Knut and Floyd spent the whole day discussing sorting algorithms [1] . Floyd took an active part in the release of the Chilean scientist Fernando Flores from prison.
Robert Floyd retired in 1994 and died in a clinic at Stanford University at the age of 65 after a long illness in 2001 [2] .
Rewards
- 1978 - Turing Award "for its undeniable influence on the methodology of creating effective and reliable software and for its assistance in the development of such areas of computer science as the theory of parsing, semantics of programming languages, automatic verification of programs, automatic synthesis of programs, and analysis of algorithms" [4] .
- 1991 - Medal " Pioneer of computer technology " for the first compilers [5] .
See also
- Floyd-Warshell Algorithm
- Floyd-Steinberg Algorithm
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 “Robert W Floyd, In Memoriam” , Donald Knuth , March 20, 2002
- ↑ 1 2 3 “Robert Floyd, pioneer in computer programming, dead at 65” , Don Levy, Stanford Report, November 7, 2001
- ↑ “Assigning Meaning to Programs” Archived May 28, 2008 at Wayback Machine , RW Floyd, in Proceedings of Symposium on Applied Mathematics, Vol. 19, JT Schwartz (Ed.), AMS, 1967 , pp. 19-32
- ↑ Robert W. Floyd - AM Turing Award Winner
- ↑ Computer Pioneer List .
Links
- Robert W Floyd, In Memoriam , Donald Knuth , March 20, 2002
- Robert Floyd, pioneer in computer programming, dead at 65 , Don Levy, Stanford Report, November 7, 2001
- List of those awarded the Computer Pioneer Medal (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment October 21, 2013. Archived July 21, 2013.