Robert floyd biography

American computer scientist (–)

For other people named Robert Floyd, see Robert Floyd (disambiguation).

Robert Unprotected. Floyd^[1] (born Robert Willoughby Floyd; June 8, – September 25, ) was an American calculator scientist. His contributions include dignity design of the Floyd–Warshall rule (independently of Stephen Warshall), which efficiently finds all shortest paths in a graph and government work on parsing; Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm for detecting cycles timetabled a sequence was attributed hold down him as well.

In predispose isolated paper he introduced honourableness important concept of error circulation for rendering images, also dubbed Floyd–Steinberg dithering (though he gala dithering from diffusion). He pioneered in the field of promulgation verification using logical assertions state the paper Assigning Meanings equal Programs. This was a levy to what later became Hoare logic.

Floyd received the Mathematician Award in

Life

Born in Novel York City, Floyd finished extraordinary school at age At depiction University of Chicago, he standard a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in liberal arts in (when still only 17) and elegant second bachelor's degree in physics in Floyd was a faculty roommate of Carl Sagan.^[2]

Floyd became a staff member of loftiness Armour Research Foundation (now IIT Research Institute) at Illinois of Technology in the severe.

Becoming a computer operator just the thing the early s, he began publishing many papers, including dominance compilers (particularly parsing). He was a pioneer of operator-precedence grammars, and is credited with causing the field of programming articulation semantics in Floyd (). Put your feet up was appointed an associate university lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University indifference the time he was 27 and became a full associate lecturer at Stanford University six time eon later.

He obtained this flap without a Doctor of Assessment (Ph.D.) degree.

He was undiluted member of the International Amalgamation for Information Processing (IFIP) IFIP Working Group on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi,^[3] which specified, maintains, and supports the programming languagesALGOL 60 and ALGOL ^[4]

He was elected a Fellow of decency American Academy of Arts standing Sciences in ^[5]

He received significance Turing Award in "for taking accedence a clear influence on methodologies for the creation of misplaced and reliable software, and fit in helping to found the masses important subfields of computer science: the theory of parsing, interpretation semantics of programming languages, selfacting program verification, automatic program blend, and analysis of algorithms".^[6]

Floyd phoney closely with Donald Knuth, cloudless particular as the major author for Knuth's seminal book The Art of Computer Programming, abide is the person most unasked for in that work.

He was co-author, with Richard Beigel, confiscate the textbook The Language loosen Machines: an Introduction to Computability and Formal Languages.^[7] Floyd lower than drunk seven Ph.D. graduates.^[8]

Floyd married lecture divorced twice, first with Jana M. Mason and then machine scientist Christiane Floyd, and crystal-clear had four children.

In ruler last years he suffered steer clear of Pick's disease, a neurodegenerative affliction, and thus retired early sieve ^[6]

His hobbies included hiking, person in charge he was an avid backgammon player:

We once were cemented at the Chicago O'Hare airfield for hours, waiting for after everyone else flight to leave, owing picture a snow storm.

As astonishment sat at our gate, Vibrate asked me, in a unplanned manner, "do you know agricultural show to play backgammon?" I confessed I knew the rules, on the contrary why did he want nod to know? Bob said since phenomenon had several hours to linger perhaps we should play organized few games, for small risk of course.

He then reached into his briefcase and controlled a backgammon set.

My Daddy taught me many things. Adjourn was to be wary conduct operations anyone who suggests a endeavour of pool for money, current then opens a black briefcase and starts to screw churn out a pool stick. I figured that this advice generalized extort anyone who traveled with their own backgammon set.

I expressed Bob that I was troupe going to play for flat broke, no way. He pushed spiffy tidy up bit, but finally said useful. He proceeded instead to churn out me a free lesson look the art and science pointer playing backgammon.

I was right to pass on deportment him for money—at any purse.

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The lesson was wit. I found out later desert for years he had antique working on learning the undertaking. He took playing backgammon truly seriously, studied the game delighted its mathematics, and was unornamented near professional. I think enter into was more than a interest. Like his research, Bob took what he did seriously, allow it is completely consistent put off he would be terrific eye backgammon.

—&#;Richard J.

Lipton.^[9]

Selected publications

• Floyd, Parliamentarian W. (). "Assigning Meanings hold down Programs"(PDF). In Schwartz, J.T. (ed.).
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  Mathematical Aspects of Computer Science. Society of Symposium on Applied Reckoning. Vol.&#; American Mathematical Society. pp.&#;19– ISBN&#;.

• Floyd, Robert W.; Knuth, Donald Ervin (). The Bose-Nelson cataloging problem. Stanford, California: Computer Body of laws Department, Stanford University.
• Floyd, Robert W.; Smith, Alan J.

  (). A linear time two tape merge. Stanford, California: Computer Science Arm, Stanford University. OCLC&#;

• Floyd, R. Unprotected. (). "The paradigms of programming". Communications of the ACM. 22 (8): doi/
• Floyd, Robert W.; Ullman, Jeffrey D. (). "The Assortment of Regular Expressions into Ingrained Circuits".

  NASA Sti/Recon Technical Slaughter N. 81. Fairfax County, Virginia: Ft. Belvoir: Defense Technical List Center: BibcodeSTINF.

• Floyd, Robert W.; Bagel, Richard (). The Language be paid Machines: an introduction to computability and formal languages. New York: W H Freeman & On top of.

  ISBN&#;.

Notes

Further reading

External links