Distributed systems. Without them, there would be no Internet. Which means that without Leslie Lamport’s monumental work on the theory of distributed computing—the Internet might not have evolved as it has today.
Thanks Leslie!
Today, Leslie Lamport, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley, was awarded the A.M. Turing Award, widely regarded as the Nobel Prize of computing. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Lamport the 2013 winner in recognition of his invaluable advances in computer science. What’s really cool to us is that this computing wizard studied mathematics right here in New England—he holds a B.S. degree in mathematics from MIT as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Brandeis University.
Since his first dabbling with computers in high school in the 1950s, Lamport has spent the last three decades working on the theory and practice of distributed computing, and his work is foundational. His 1978 paper Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System is one of the most cited in the history of computer science.
“The Internet is a distributed system. So you like using the Internet? You owe Leslie,” says Robert Taylor, Director Emeritus of Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center.
“The algorithms that he designed, which is many cases were not viewed as important at the time, are now fundamental to the way we build web scale systems,” says Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. “The systems that all of us use every day.”
Read the official Microsoft Research blog about Leslie Lamport, including a video that will show you exactly how much Leslie has advanced the field of computer science: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/lamport-031814.aspx.