Barbara Liskov facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Barbara Liskov
|
|
|---|---|
Liskov in 2010
|
|
| Born |
Barbara Jane Huberman
November 7, 1939 Los Angeles, California, US
|
| Alma mater | |
| Known for |
|
| Spouse(s) | Nathan Liskov (1970–) |
| Children | 1 |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Thesis | A Program to Play Chess End Games (1968) |
| Doctoral advisor | John McCarthy |
| Doctoral students |
|
Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939) is an American computer scientist. She has made very important contributions to how we design programming languages and how computers work together in distributed computing.
Her famous work includes introducing abstract data types, which are special ways to organize information in computer programs. She also developed the Liskov substitution principle. This rule helps programmers build object-oriented software where different parts can easily work together.
Barbara Liskov received the 2008 Turing Award. This is the highest honor in computer science, like a Nobel Prize for computers! She was one of the first women in the United States to earn a PhD in computer science. She was also the second woman ever to receive the Turing Award. Today, she is a special professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Contents
Early Life and Education
Barbara Liskov was born on November 7, 1939, in Los Angeles, California. She was the oldest of four children.
In 1961, she earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. She also studied a bit of physics. In her math classes at Berkeley, she had only one other female classmate.
After Berkeley, she moved to Boston. She started working at a company called Mitre Corporation. There, she became very interested in computers and how to program them. She later worked at Harvard, helping with language translation programs.
Barbara then decided to go back to school. In March 1968, she made history. She became one of the first women in the United States to get a PhD in computer science. She earned her degree from Stanford University. At Stanford, she worked with John McCarthy, a famous computer scientist. Her PhD project was about creating a computer program that could play chess endgames. For this, she came up with a clever idea called the "killer heuristic."
Career in Computer Science
After finishing her PhD, Liskov went back to work at Mitre. Later, she joined the MIT.
Barbara Liskov has led many important computer projects. Here are some of them:
- Venus operating system: This was a small, affordable system that allowed many people to use one computer at the same time. This is called timesharing.
- CLU: She designed and built CLU, a new programming language.
- Argus: This was the first high-level programming language that helped create programs that run across many different computers.
- Thor: This was a special kind of database that stored information in an "object-oriented" way.
With another scientist named Jeannette Wing, she created the Liskov substitution principle. This principle is a key idea in object-oriented programming. It helps make sure that different parts of a computer program can be swapped out without breaking the program.
Today, she leads the Programming Methodology Group at MIT. Her research focuses on making computer systems reliable, even if some parts fail. This is called Byzantine fault tolerance. She also works on distributed computing, which is about making many computers work together to solve big problems.
Awards and Recognition
Barbara Liskov is a member of several important groups, like the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2002, she was recognized as one of the top women professors at MIT. Discover magazine also named her one of the 50 most important women in science that year.
In 2004, she won the IEEE John von Neumann Medal. This award was for her important work on programming languages and how computers work together. She also received honorary doctorates from universities in Switzerland and Spain.
In March 2009, Liskov received the 2008 Turing Award. The award recognized her work in designing programming languages and software methods. Her ideas helped create object-oriented programming. The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) specifically praised her contributions to how we design programming languages and systems. This included her work on data abstraction (hiding complex details), fault tolerance (making systems work even when things go wrong), and distributed computing.
In 2012, she was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2023, she received the Benjamin Franklin Medal. This was for her important work that helps create reliable and reusable computer programs.
Personal Life
In 1970, Barbara married Nathan Liskov. They have one son, Moses. He also became a computer scientist and teaches at the College of William and Mary.
See also
