23 April 2004Turing Award for 2003
The Turing award for 2003 has been awarded to Alan Kay for leading the team that invented Smalltalk, an influential programming language that used object-oriented concepts, and for fundamental contributions to personal computing.
The nomination of the Turing award winner usually triggers some speculations about the future awardees for this prize. A look at the list of previous winners indicates a good presence of theoretical computer scientists, and at least three people (Hoare, Milner and Pnueli) who have done fundamental work in the theory of concurrency are in that list. Who will be the next recipient of this award from our community? I'd be happy to hear your opinions on this point.
For the moment, you might wish to read Oded Godreich's interesting opinions on awards. In his words:
"Typically, awards are actually a lottery (which is non-biased at best) among equals, and once the outcome is determined people treat the winners as if they were better. How does this process serve truth and beauty (or science and art)?"
Last modified: Friday, 23-Apr-2004 16:33:29 CEST.