Joe Armstrong (programmer) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joe Armstrong
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Armstrong in 2009
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| Born | 27 December 1950 Bournemouth, England, UK
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| Died | 20 April 2019 (aged 68) |
| Alma mater | University College London, UK; Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden |
| Occupation | Computer programmer, professor, author |
| Known for | Creating the Erlang programming language |
| Spouse(s) | Helen Taylor |
| Children | Thomas Armstrong, Claire Armstrong |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Edinburgh Ericsson Computer Science Lab KTH |
Joseph Leslie Armstrong (27 December 1950 – 20 April 2019) was a computer scientist working in the area of fault-tolerant distributed systems. He is best known as one of the co-designers of the Erlang programming language.
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Early life and education
Armstrong was born in Bournemouth, England in 1950.
At 17, Armstrong began programming in Fortran on his local council's mainframe.
Armstrong graduated with a B.Sc. in Physics from University College London in 1972.
He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden in 2003. His dissertation was titled Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors. He was a professor at KTH from 2014 until his death.
Career
After briefly working for Donald Michie at the University of Edinburgh, Armstrong moved to Sweden in 1974 and joined the Ericsson Computer Science Lab at Kista in 1984.
It was at Ericsson in 1986, that he worked with Robert Virding and Mike Williams, to invent the Erlang programming language, which was released as open source in 1998.
Personal life
Armstrong married Helen Taylor in 1977. They had two children, Thomas and Claire.
Death
Armstrong died on 20 April 2019 from an infection which was complicated by pulmonary fibrosis.
