Portrait of Edsger Dijkstra (courtesy Brian Randell)

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Rotterdam, May 11, 1930 – Nuenen, August 6, 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist.

Life

Dijkstra studied theoretical physics at the University of Leiden. He worked as a research fellow for Burroughs Corporation in the early 1970s. He worked at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and later held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, in the United States. He retired in 2000.

Among his contributions to computer science are the shortest path-algorithm, also known as Dijkstra's algorithm. He received the Turing Award in 1972.

He was also known for his low opinion of the GOTO statement in computer programming, culminating in the 1968 article Go To Statement Considered Harmful, regarded as a major step towards the widespread deprecation of the GOTO statement and its effective replacement by control structures such as the while loop. The paper's famous title was not the work of Dijkstra, but of Niklaus Wirth, then editor of Communications of the ACM. Dijkstra was known to be a fan of ALGOL 60, and worked on the team that implemented the first compiler for that language. Dijkstra and Jaap Zonneveld, who collaborated on the compiler, agreed not to shave until the project was completed. Zonneveld eventually shaved off his beard, Dijkstra kept it until his death.

Since the 1970s, Dijkstra's chief interest was formal verification. The prevailing opinion at the time was that one should first write a program and then provide a mathematical proof of correctness. Dijkstra objected that the resulting proofs are long and cumbersome, and that the proof gives no insight as to how the program was developed. An alternative method is program derivation, to "develop proof and program hand in hand." One starts with a mathematical specification of what a program is supposed to do and applies mathematical transformations to the specification until it is turned into a program that can be executed. The resulting program is then known to be correct by construction. Much of Dijkstra's later work concerns ways to streamline mathematical argument.

Dijkstra was known for his forthright opinions on programming, and for his habit of carefully composing manuscripts with his fountain pen. Many of his notes have since been scanned and are available online.

He died on August 6, 2002 after a long struggle with cancer.

Pronunciation

To English ears, Edsger Dijkstra sounds like ed-Star dEX-trah. See Dutch Pronunciation in the External links and References below.

Quotes

• "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

• "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

See also

• Dijkstra's algorithm
• Dining philosophers problem
• The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science

External links and references

• Wikiquote - Quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
• Edsger Wybe Dijkstra 1930-2002
  • U. of Texas, obituary & biography
  • Biography, Digidome
• Writings by E.W. Dijkstra
  • E.W. Dijkstra, Go To Statement Considered Harmful, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11 (1968) 147-148; online edition
  • Collected works
  • [1] Dutch Pronunciation Guide