Kenneth E. Iverson

Infobox_Scientist
name = Kenneth Eugene Iverson


image_width =
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1920|12|17|mf=y
birth_place = Camrose, Alberta, Canada
death_date = death date and age|2004|10|19|1920|12|17|mf=y
death_place = Toronto, Ontario, Canada
residence =
citizenship = Canadian
nationality =
ethnicity =
field = Computer Science
work_institution = Harvard University
IBM
alma_mater = Queen's University
Harvard University
doctoral_advisor = Wassily Leontief and Howard Aiken
doctoral_students =
known_for = APL programming language
J programming language
author_abbreviation_bot =
author_abbreviation_zoo =
prizes = IBM Fellow
Harry H. Goode Memorial Award
Turing Award
Computer Pioneer Award
National Medal of Technology
religion =
footnotes =

Kenneth Eugene Iverson (17 December, 1920 - 19 October, 2004) was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the APL programming language in 1962. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory. The Iverson Award for contributions to APL was named in his honor.

Life

Ken Iverson was born on December 17, 1920 in Camrose, a town in central Alberta, Canada. His parents were farmers of Norwegian descent who came to Alberta from North Dakota. While he showed an early aptitude for mathematics, teaching himself calculus while a teenager, he left school after the 9th grade to work on his parents' farm. However, during World War II, while he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he qualified for a high school diploma by taking correspondence courses. After the war, he was able to enter Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics.

Continuing his education at Harvard University, he received a Master's degree in 1951 in Mathematics and started working with Howard Aiken and Wassily Leontief. Howard Aiken had developed the Harvard Mark I, one of the first large-scale digital computers, while Wassily Leontief was an economist who was developing the input-output model of economic analysis, work for which he would later receive the Nobel prize. Leontief's model required large matrices and Iverson worked on programs that could evaluate these matrices on the Harvard Mark IV computer. Iverson received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1954 with a dissertation based on this work.

Iverson stayed at Harvard as an assistant professor for the next five years but failed to get tenure.

Iverson was hired by IBM in 1960 to develop his notation into a programming language for the IBM/360.

In 1980, Iverson left IBM for I. P. Sharp Associates, a leading Canadian APL timesharing company, where he, among other things, participated in the further development of the APL programming language. In 1987 he retired from I. P. Sharp.

In the summer of 1989, Roger Hui and Arthur Whitney, along with Iverson, produced a short prototype interpreter which would later be the seed for the J programming language, a variant of APL. Iverson and Roger Hui would continue collaborating on J for the next 15 years.

Ken Iverson died of a stroke on October 19, 2004 at the age of 83.

Work

Iverson developed a mathematical notation for manipulating arrays that he taught to his students. In 1960, he began work for IBM and working with Adin Falkoff, created APL based on the notation he had developed. He was named an IBM Fellow in 1970.

In late 1989, Ken Iverson and Roger Hui began collaboration on an advanced continuation of an APL-like language which they called J. The improvements not only were intended to fix some of the persistent character set issues that had plagued APL since its inception, but to add new advanced features such as support for parallel MIMD operations, some of which do not appear in APL today. It was intended that the J language be an improvement over existing APL. The J interpreter and language continues to evolve today. It is available free of charge from J Software

Major Publications

* "A Programming Language", John Wiley and Sons, (1962)
* "Automatic Data Processing" (with Frederick Brooks), John Wiley and Sons (1963)
* "A formal Description of the System /360," (with A. D. Falkoff and E. H. Sussenguth), IBM Systems Journal, vol. 3. no. 3, 1964, pp. 198-262.
* "Elementary Functions: an algorithmic treatment" (Science Research Associates, Inc.) (1966)
* "APL/360:User's Manual" (with A. D. Falkoff), IBM, 1968
* "APL in Exposition," IBM Philadelphia Sceientific Center Tech. Report No. 320-3010, IBM, 1972.
* "The Design of APL," (with A. D. Falkoff) IBM J. Research and Development, vol. 17, no. 4, 19073, pp. 324-334.
* "Notation as a Tool of Thought," Comm. ACM, vol. 23, no. 8, 1980, pp. 444-465.
* "A Source Book In APL" (with Adin D. Falkoff) (APL Press) (1981)
* "Tangible Math" (Iverson Software Inc.) (1990)
* "A Personal View of APL," IBM System Journal, vol. 30, no. 4, 1991, pp. 582-593.
* "The ISI Dictionary of J" (Iverson Software Inc.) (1991)

Awards

* "IBM Fellow" (IBM) (1970)
* "Harry H. Goode Memorial Award" (IEEE Computer Society) (1975)
* "Turing Award" (Association for Computing Machinery) (1979)
* "Computer Pioneer Award" [Charter recipient] (IEEE Computer Society) (1982)
* Honrary doctorate, York University, Toronto, 1998

ee also

*APL programming language
*J programming language
*Iverson Award
*Iverson bracket

External article links

* [http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/032/falkoff.pdf "A Formal Description of SYSTEM/360"] by Adin D. Falkoff, Kenneth E. Iverson, and Edward H. Sussenguth, Jr., IBM Systems Journal, Volume 3, Number 3, 1964.
* [http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/174/ibmrd1704F.pdf "The Design of APL"] by Adin D. Falkoff and Kenneth E. Iverson, IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 17, Number 4, 1973.
* [http://elliscave.com/APL_J/tool.pdf "Notation as a Tool of Thought"] (1979 Turing Award Lecture) by Kenneth E. Iverson, Communications of the ACM, Volume 23, Number 8, August 1980.
* [http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/304/ibmsj3004O.pdf A "Personal View of APL"] by Kenneth E. Iverson, IBM Systems Journal, Volume 30, Number 4, 1991.

External links

* [http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Kenneth_E._Iverson] An autobiographical essay
* [http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/dblp/db/indices/a-tree/i/Iverson:Kenneth_E=.html Kenneth E. Iverson] : This page at the Digital Bibliography and Library Project lists Kenneth Iverson's publications.
* [http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistprofile.php?pID=178 Short Biography] at the science.ca website
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1076611.ece Obituary] in The Times
* [http://campus.acm.org/public/pressroom/press_releases/11_2004/iverson_11_10_2004.cfm Obituary] at the Association for Computing Machinery
* [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/334/2575 Ehud Lamm's obituary] at Lambda the Ultimate
* [http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v223/ Remembering Kenneth E. Iverson] Memorial issue of [http://www.vector.org.uk/ Vector] , the Journal of the [http://www.bcs.org/BCS/Groups/SpecialistGroups/AtoB/BritishAPLAssoc/ British APL Association]
* [http://keiapl.info/ A Celebration of the life of Kenneth Eugene Iverson]
* [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KenIverson Ken Iverson] on the WikiWikiWeb

Persondata
NAME= Iverson, Kenneth Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Computer Science
DATE OF BIRTH= December 17, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH= Camrose, Alberta, Canada
DATE OF DEATH= October 19, 2004
PLACE OF DEATH= Toronto, Ontario, Canada