Jeffrey Ullman facts for kids

Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is a famous American computer scientist. He is a professor at Stanford University. He wrote many important textbooks about computers. These books cover topics like compilers (which help computers understand code), theory of computation (how computers solve problems), data structures (how information is organized), and databases (where information is stored).

In 2020, Jeffrey Ullman and his friend Alfred Aho won the Turing Award. This award is like the Nobel Prize for computer science. It's the highest honor you can get in the field!

Jeffrey Ullman's Journey in Computer Science

Early Education and Career

Jeffrey Ullman studied engineering mathematics at Columbia University and earned his first degree in 1963. He then went to Princeton University and got his PhD in electrical engineering in 1966. After that, he worked at Bell Labs for three years.

In 1969, he returned to Princeton as a professor. Later, in 1979, he moved to Stanford University. He even led the computer science department at Stanford from 1990 to 1994. He became a special professor in 1994 and retired in 2003, but he still teaches and works on projects.

Awards and Recognitions

Jeffrey Ullman has received many important awards for his work:

• In 1994, he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This means he was recognized as a top expert in computing.
• He won the Knuth Prize in 2000.
• In 2010, he received the IEEE John von Neumann Medal with John Hopcroft. They were honored for helping to create the fields of automata theory (how machines work) and formal language theory (how computer languages are built).
• In 2017, he, John Hopcroft, and Alfred Aho won the C&C Prize from NEC Corporation.
• In 2020, he was chosen to be a member of the National Academy of Sciences. This is a very high honor for scientists in the United States.
• And, as mentioned, he and Alfred Aho received the 2020 Turing Award in March 2021.

Research and Contributions

Jeffrey Ullman is very interested in database theory, which is about how to store and manage large amounts of information. He also works on data integration (combining data from different places) and data mining (finding patterns in large datasets).

He is one of the people who started the field of database theory. Many of his students became important computer scientists themselves. One of his most famous students is Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google! Jeffrey Ullman also advised Google in its early days.

He also started a company called Gradiance Corporation. This company helps college students with their homework. Today, he teaches online courses about how computers work and how to find useful information in huge datasets.

Important Books by Jeffrey Ullman

Jeffrey Ullman has written many influential books that are used by students and experts around the world. Here are some of them:

• Mining of Massive Datasets (with Jure Leskovec and Anand Rajaraman), published in 2014. This book helps people understand how to find useful information from very large collections of data.
• Database Systems: The Complete Book (with H. Garcia-Molina and J. Widom), published in 2002. This is a comprehensive guide to database systems.
• Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (with J. E. Hopcroft and R. Motwani), with editions in 1969, 1979, and 2000. This book teaches about how computers process information and understand languages.
• Elements of ML Programming, published in 1993 and 1998.
• A First Course in Database Systems (with J. Widom), published in 1997 and 2002. This book is an introduction to databases.
• Foundations of Computer Science (with A. V. Aho), published in 1992 and 1995. This book covers the basic ideas of computer science.
• Principles of Database and Knowledge-Base Systems (two volumes), published in 1988 and 1989.
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (with A. V. Aho and R. Sethi), published in 1977 and 1986. This book is often called the "dragon book" because of its cover. It teaches how to build compilers, which translate programming code into instructions computers can understand.
• Computational Aspects of VLSI, published in 1984. This book is about designing very complex computer chips.
• Data Structures and Algorithms (with A. V. Aho and J. E. Hopcroft), published in 1983. This book teaches how to organize and process data efficiently.
• Principles of Compiler Design (with A. V. Aho), published in 1977.
• Fundamental Concepts of Programming Systems, published in 1976.
• The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms (with A. V. Aho and J. E. Hopcroft), published in 1974. This book focuses on creating and understanding efficient computer programs.
• Formal Languages and Their Relation to Automata (with J. E. Hopcroft), published in 1969.

See also

In Spanish: Jeffrey Ullman para niños