30th International Conference on
Software Engineering ®
Leipzig, Germany, 10 - 18 May 2008

40 Years of Software Engineering

M. Douglas McIlroy

M. Douglas McIlroy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

Biography

M. Douglas McIlroy joined Dartmouth College as adjunct professor of computer science upon retirement from a long career in computer science research at Bell Laboratories. At Bell Labs he headed the department in which Unix was born. He he helped design PL/I and C++, and wrote several compilers, including the PL/I compiler used in the development of the influential Multics operating system. His interest in stream processing led to Unix "pipes" and novel stream-based algorithms. The term "language extension" was aired in his early work on macroprocessors; and "software components" in a paper given at the 1968 NATO conference that stimulated the discipline of software engineering. To Unix he contributed programs that embody interesting technology, such as "diff", "spell", and "sort", as well as "speak", the first real-time text-to-speech program. More recently his research has addressed multilevel security for UNIX, ultimately accurate bitmap graphics, and full-text indexing. Among other security activities, he led the group that set the first computer-security policies at Bell Labs, and coauthored the 1991 NRC report, "Computers at Risk". Dr. McIlroy earned a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell (1954) and a PhD in applied mathematics from MIT (1959). He was a visiting lecturer at Oxford University in 1967-8. He has served on various governmental advisory panels and municipal bodies, is a fellow the AAAS, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

mail to webmaster . sitemap . 15 April 08