Jeffrey Ullman facts for kids

Jeffrey David Ullman, born on November 22, 1942, is a famous American computer scientist. He used to be a professor at Stanford University. He wrote many important textbooks about computers. These books cover topics like how computers understand programs (called compilers, sometimes known as the "dragon book") and how they store information (databases). He won the 2020 Turing Award with his friend Alfred Aho. This award is like the Nobel Prize for computer science!

Jeffrey Ullman's Career and Achievements

Jeffrey Ullman studied engineering mathematics at Columbia University. He earned his first degree in 1963. Later, he got his PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1966.

Early Work and Teaching

After finishing his studies, Ullman worked at Bell Labs for three years. In 1969, he went back to Princeton University to teach. He became a full professor there in 1974. In 1979, he moved to Stanford University. He was the head of the computer science department at Stanford from 1990 to 1994. He became a professor Emeritus (meaning he retired but still holds his title) in 2003.

Awards and Recognition

Jeffrey Ullman has received many important awards for his work in computer science:

• In 1994, he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This is a special honor for computer professionals.
• He won the Knuth Prize in 2000. This award is given for important contributions to the foundations of computer science.
• In 2010, he received the IEEE John von Neumann Medal with John Hopcroft. They were honored for creating the basic ideas for automata theory and formal language theory. These fields help us understand how computers process information.
• In 2017, he, John Hopcroft, and Alfred Aho won the C&C Prize from NEC Corporation.
• In 2020, he was chosen as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
• On March 31, 2021, he and Alfred Aho received the 2020 Turing Award. This is one of the highest honors in computer science.

Research and Impact

Ullman's research focuses on how databases work and how to find useful information from large amounts of data (called data mining). He is one of the people who helped start the field of database theory. Many of his students also became very important in this area.

He was even the PhD advisor for Sergey Brin, who later co-founded Google! Ullman also served on Google's technical advisory board. He started a company called Gradiance Corporation, which helps college students with their homework. Today, he teaches online courses about computer science topics like automata and mining huge datasets.

Jeffrey Ullman's Books

Jeffrey Ullman has written many influential books that are used by students and experts around the world. These books cover key areas of computer science.

Some of his well-known books include:

• Mining of massive datasets (with Jure Leskovec and Anand Rajaraman), which teaches how to find patterns in very large collections of data.
• Database Systems: The Complete Book (with H. Garcia-Molina and J. Widom), a comprehensive guide to how databases are built and used.
• Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (with J. E. Hopcroft and R. Motwani), a classic book about how computers process languages and information.
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (with A. V. Aho and R. Sethi), often called the "dragon book," which explains how computer programs are translated into code that computers can understand.
• Data Structures and Algorithms (with A. V. Aho and J. E. Hopcroft), which teaches how to organize and process data efficiently.

These books have helped shape how computer science is taught and understood globally.

See also

In Spanish: Jeffrey Ullman para niños