Douglas McIlroy facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Malcolm Douglas McIlroy
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McIlroy at the Japan Prize Foundation in 2011
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| Born | 1932 (age 88–89) |
| Alma mater | Cornell University (B.S., 1954) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1959) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | computer science, mathematics, engineering |
| Thesis | On the Solution of the Differential Equations of Conical Shells (1959) |
Malcolm Douglas McIlroy is an American mathematician, engineer, and programmer. He is famous for inventing the pipeline used in the UNIX computer operating system , the principles of component-based software engineering and several original UNIX utilities: spell, diff, sort, join, speak, and tr.
Biography
Douglas McIlroy went to school and earned a Bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University in 1954 and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959. In 1958, he joined Bell Labs. From 1965 to 1986, he was Head of Computer Research at Bell Labs. The UNIX operating system was invented in Bell Labs. In 1997, McIlroy retired from Bell Labs and wen to work as an Adjunct Professor at Dartmouth College's Computer Science Department.
