(photo ©2002 Hamilton Richards)
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was one of the most influential members of computing science’s founding generation. Among the domains in which his scientific contributions are fundamental are algorithm design
programming languages
program design
operating systems
distributed processing
formal specification and verification
design of mathematical arguments In addition, Dijkstra was intensely interested in teaching, and in the relationships between academic computing science and the software industry. During his forty-plus years as a computing scientist, which included positions in both academia and industry, Dijkstra’s contributions brought him many prizes and awards, including computing science’s highest honor, the ACM Turing Award.
The Manuscripts
Like most of us, Dijkstra always believed it a scientist’s duty to maintain a lively correspondence with his scientific colleagues. To a greater extent than most of us, he put that conviction into practice. For over four decades, he mailed copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, and pungent commentaries, known collectively as “EWDs”, to several dozen recipients in academia and industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier and the wide interest in Dijkstra’s writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands.
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