Edsger W. Dijkstra

• Born in Rotterdam on 11 May 1930.
• Studied theoretical Physics at the University of Leiden.
• Worked at the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam from 1952 till 1962.
• In the late 1960s, he built the THE operating system which influenced later operating systems.
• Joined the Burroughs Corporation in 1973 as a research fellow.
• The Burroughs years saw him at his prolific best - writing nearly 500 articles.
• Dijkstra accepted the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984.
• Dijkstra worked in Austin until his retirement in November 1999.
• Died of cancer in Nuenen, Netherlands, on 6 August 2002.
• He made fundamental contributions to the following domains of Computer Science -
  • algorithm design
  • programming languages
  • program design
  • operating systems
  • distributed processing
  • formal specification and verification
  • design of mathematical arguments
• His awards include -
  • Turing award (1972)
  • SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution (1989)
  • ACM Fellow (1994)

The difference between a computer programmer and a computer scientist is a job-title thing. Edsger Dijkstra wants proudly to be called a "computer programmer," although he hasn't touched a computer now for some years. (...) His great strength is that he is uncompromising. It would make him physically ill to think of programming in C++.

Check the Dijkstra manuscript archive for more info.