Johns F. (Jeff) Rulifson (born August 20, 1941) is a computer scientist largely known for his involvement at the Augmentation Research Center, at then-named Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in implementing the On-Line System (NLS), a system that foreshadowed many future developments in modern computing and networking. Although Douglas Engelbart was the founder and leader of ARC, Rulifson's innovative programming was essential to the realization of Engelbart's vision.

Rulifson was also an instrumental figure during the early days of the ARPANET. He developed the Decode-Encode Language (DEL), which is documented in the early history of ARPANET in the form of several Request for Comments. Although never used, DEL was an early precursor to Sun Microsystems's Java programming language.

Rulifson left SRI to join the Scientific Systems Lab (SSL) within Xerox PARC, during the 1970s. While at PARC, he worked on implementing distributed office systems. In 1990, Rulifson won the Association for Computing Machinery's Software System Award for implementing groundbreaking innovations such as hypertext, outline processors, and video conferencing. He currently works for Sun Microsystems Laboratories, in Ivan Sutherland's lab.

External links

• Jeff Rulifson biography at Sun Europe
• Jeff Rulifson homepage