I remember his giving a talk about 5 years ago at the time of his retirement from Bell Labs. He was delighted that he was now a
contract employee and no longer had to fill out a certain form annually and answer a question something like: "What have you done for Bell Labs this year?" Free at last. -Tom West On Oct 13, 2011, at 5:19 PM, Nick LaForge wrote: >> It is so sad that the people most responsible for the key software >> technologies are almost unheard of by the general public, and most >> credit seems to be given to people that jump on the bandwagon much >> later.. > >> If there was a Nobel prize for software, dmr would have been one of >> the top on my list. > > The public's traditional fascination with physics makes an interesting > comparison, considering the relative obscurity computer science > enjoys. > > Physics' gifts include nuclear fission, medical imaging, aerospace, > semiconducting... the list is enumerable. Yet the greatest celebrity > among physicists undoubtedly is Albert Einstein, who's contributions > are most significant theoretically (aerospace aside). So it seems > fitting that a similarly theoretical and precise discipline like > computer science should enjoy comparable status (in opposition to the > actual situation where Gates and Jobs get the glory). Ironically, the > real reason for mathematics omission by Nobel likely was that Alfred > Nobel thought it TOO theoretical a discipline (see > http://mathforum.org/social/articles/ross.html). Regardless, it took > people like dmr (and Turing, Church, Shannon, Neumann, Dijkstra, > Backus, Forsythe, Floyd, Hoare, Knuth, ...) to map abstract > mathematical science onto workable machines. > > Maybe such a collaborative science doesn't permit hero worship? Dmr's > own publicly visible accomplishments alone make him worthy of it, yet > his humility was so apparent ("I'm not a person who particularly had > heros when growing up"). Perhaps his behind-the-scenes impact among > his colleagues at Bell Labs eclipse even what everyone else can see. > > But it's still sad that among those acquainted with Einstein and his > contributions, less than 1% seem to even know who Turing was. > > Nick >
