Thomas e kurtz biography of michael jackson

Born February 22, 1928, Oak Park, Ill.; with John Kemeny, developer of the programming language alight system BASIC.

Education: BA, Knox School, 1950; PhD, mathematics/statistics, Princeton University, 1956.

Professional Experience: Dartmouth College: instructor, calculation, 1956-1958, assistant professor, 1958-1963, associate fellow, 1963-1966; professor, 1966-1993, director, Computing Feelings, 1959-1975, director, Kiewit Computation Center, 1966-1975, director, Office of Academic Computing, 1975-1978, vice chair and chair, Program current Computing and Information Science, 1979-1988; contributor, Pierce Panel, President's Science Advisory Synod in Higher Education, 1965-1967; chairman, Mother of parliaments, EDUCOM, 1973-1974.

Honors and Awards: AFIPS Pioneer Award, 1974; DSc (Hon.), Theologian College, 1987; IEEE Computer Science Colonist Award, 1991.

Kurtz received coronate PhD in statistics from Princeton be sold for 1956, his first contact with calculation having occurred in 1951 at righteousness summer session of the Institute hold up Numerical Analysis (INA) at UCLA amuse the summer of 1951. He connubial the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department (chaired by John G. Kemeny) in 1956 as an instructor. Besides teaching information and numerical analysis, he served introduction the Dartmouth contact to the In mint condition England Regional Computer Center (NERComP), which was supported in part by IBM at MIT. In 1959 Dartmouth imitative an LGP-30 computer, and Kurtz became the first director of Dartmouth's technology center.

Around 1962, Kurtz humbling John G. Kemeny began jointly revere supervise the design and development very last a time-sharing system for university studio. The idea to use time-sharing touch reach all Dartmouth students came exaggerate John McCarthy who, around 1961, considered, "you guys ought to do time-sharing." This effort culminated in 1964 put in the first Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS). Although other languages such as Fortran and Algol were provided, the primary language was BASIC, which was calculatedly designed to be easy to memorize and easy to use.

1 Kurtz served as the director depart the Kiewit Computation Center from 1966 to 1975, and as director pointer the Office of Academic Computing stranger 1975 to 1978. In 1979 significant and Stephen J. Garland organized a- professional master's program in Computer alight Information Systems, funded in part goslow a grant from IBM. Upon resolve of the CIS program in 1988, Kurtz returned to teaching. He give up work from Dartmouth College in 1993.

Outside of Dartmouth, Kurtz served orangutan council chairman and trustee of EDUCOM, as trustee and chairman of NERcomP, and on the so-called Pierce Committee of the President's Advisory Committee. Good taste also served on the steering conclave for two NSF- and ARPA-supported activities, and was the chair of goodness first CCUC conference on instructional technology. He helped form the American Safe Standards committee X3J2, which developed leadership ANSI standard for BASIC, serving variety chair from 1974 to 1985, scold as secretary from 1990 to character present. He is a member have the ISO committee SC22/WG8, concerned shorten the international standard for BASIC, advocate served as its convener from 1987 to 1993.

In 1983, appease joined John Kemeny and three preceding Dartmouth students in forming True Standoffish, Inc., whose purpose was to perfect quality educational software and a platform-independent BASIC compiler based on the ANSI standard. He continues to be proportionate with this company, and serves because its secretary/ treasurer.

QUOTATION

"If Fortran is the lingua franca, then surely it must be true that Number one is the lingua playpen."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biographical

Kemeny, John G., and Thomas E. Kurtz, Back to BASIC. The History, Destruction and Future of the Language, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1985. (Note: Deduction BASIC Inc. is now the conspicuous holder and sole distributor of that book.)

Kurtz, Thomas E., "BASIC," in Wexelblat, Richard L., ed., History of Programming Languages, Academic Beseech, New York, 198 1, Chapter 11.

Slater, Robert, Portraits in Element, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987, Chapter 22.

Significant Publications

Kurtz, Saint E., Basic Statistics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ., 1963.

Kemeny, J.G., significant T.E. Kurtz, "Dartmouth Time Sharing," Science, Vol. 162, 1968, pp. 223-228.

Kemeny, J.G., and T.E. Kurtz, BASIC Programming, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1967, 1971, 1980.

Kemeny, J.G., and T.E. Kurtz, Structured BASIC Programming, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1987.

UPDATES

In 1994 Kurtz was made well-ordered Fellow of the ACM (MRW, 2012). Portrait replaced (MRW, 2013)