17 February 2005 "Engines of Logic" and the ACM Turing Award for 2004
I just finished reading the lovely "Engines of Logic" by Martin Davis. It has been a really enjoyable and instructive read, and I thank the author for making the effort of writing it. We should encourage all of our colleagues and students to read this book. As Moshe Vardi never tires of pointing out, logic is the calculus of CS, and a book like the one by Davis will help increase awareness of the importance of logic in our field. I strongly recommend this text.
In his book, Davis stresses the important role played by Turing in the actual development of computers. I thought that this was uncontroversial until a few days ago, but obviously I was misinformed! Anyway, this leads me to the second item in this brief posting, viz. the ACM Turing award for 2004. The award has been given to Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn for "pioneering work on internetworking, including the design and implementation of the Internet's basic communications protocols, TCP/IP, and for inspired leadership in networking." See the award page for further details.
Congratulations to the field of computer netwroks for the award!
Last modified: Thursday, 17-Feb-2005 13:55:22 CET.