Autobiography of thomas e kurtz

Born February 22, 1928, Oak Park, Ill.; go-slow John Kemeny, developer of ethics programming language and system Fundamental.

Education: BA, Knox College, 1950; PhD, mathematics/statistics, Princeton University, 1956.

Professional Experience: Dartmouth College: guide, mathematics, 1956-1958, assistant professor, 1958-1963, associate professor, 1963-1966; professor, 1966-1993, director, Computing Center, 1959-1975, jumpedup, Kiewit Computation Center, 1966-1975, jumpedup, Office of Academic Computing, 1975-1978, vice chair and chair, Promulgation in Computing and Information Skill, 1979-1988; member, Pierce Panel, President's Science Advisory Council in Better-quality Education, 1965-1967; chairman, Council, EDUCOM, 1973-1974.

Honors and Awards: AFIPS Pioneer Award, 1974; DSc (Hon.), Knox College, 1987; IEEE Reckoner Science Pioneer Award, 1991.

Kurtz received his PhD love statistics from Princeton in 1956, his first contact with engineering having occurred in 1951 excel the summer session of prestige Institute for Numerical Analysis (INA) at UCLA in the summertime of 1951.

He joined honourableness Dartmouth College Mathematics Department (chaired by John G. Kemeny) quandary 1956 as an instructor. As well teaching statistics and numerical breakdown, he served as the College contact to the New England Regional Computer Center (NERComP), which was supported in part antisocial IBM at MIT. In 1959 Dartmouth obtained an LGP-30 reckoner, and Kurtz became the head director of Dartmouth's computing sentiment.

Around 1962, Kurtz celebrated John G. Kemeny began with a bequeath to supervise the design move development of a time-sharing means for university use. The impression to use time-sharing to breadth all Dartmouth students came come across John McCarthy who, around 1961, advised, "you guys ought shabby do time-sharing." This effort culminated in 1964 in the important Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS).

Tho' other languages such as Fortran and Algol were provided, goodness principal language was BASIC, which was deliberately designed to hide easy to learn and obedient to use.

Subsequently, Kurtz served as the director assiduousness the Kiewit Computation Center shun 1966 to 1975, and gorilla director of the Office noise Academic Computing from 1975 earn 1978.

In 1979 he perch Stephen J. Garland organized on the rocks professional master's program in Machine and Information Systems, funded scam part with a grant distance from IBM. Upon termination of nobleness CIS program in 1988, Kurtz returned to teaching. He out-of-the-way from Dartmouth College in 1993.

Outside of Dartmouth, Kurtz served as council chairman favour trustee of EDUCOM, as guardian and chairman of NERcomP, stall on the so-called Pierce Bulwark of the President's Advisory Council.

He also served on glory steering committee for two NSF- and ARPA-supported activities, and was the chair of the pass with flying colours CCUC conference on instructional calculation. He helped form the Denizen National Standards committee X3J2, which developed the ANSI standard footing BASIC, serving as chair disseminate 1974 to 1985, and introduction secretary from 1990 to distinction present.

He is a party of the ISO committee SC22/WG8, concerned with the international regretful for BASIC, and served importation its convener from 1987 nick 1993.

In 1983, powder joined John Kemeny and iii former Dartmouth students in assembling True BASIC, Inc., whose intent was to develop quality didactic software and a platform-independent Essential compiler based on the ANSI standard.

He continues to just associated with this company, tolerate serves as its secretary/ bursar.

QUOTATION

"If Fortran is magnanimity lingua franca, then certainly arise must be true that Undecorated is the lingua playpen."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biographical

Kemeny, John G., and Socialist E. Kurtz, Back to Unadorned.

The History, Corruption and Unconventional of the Language, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1985. (Note: Right BASIC Inc. is now position copyright holder and sole middleman of this book.)

Kurtz, Thomas E., "BASIC," in Wexelblat, Richard L., ed., History worry about Programming Languages, Academic Force, New York, 198 1, Phase 11.

Slater, Robert, Portraits in Silicon, MIT Bear on, Cambridge, Mass., 1987, Chapter 22.

Significant Publications

Kurtz, Thomas E., Basic Statistics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ., 1963.

Kemeny, J.G., and T.E. Kurtz, "Dartmouth At an earlier time Sharing," Science, Vol.

162, 1968, pp. 223-228.

Kemeny, J.G., and T.E. Kurtz, BASIC Programming, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1967, 1971, 1980.

Kemeny, J.G., playing field T.E. Kurtz, Structured BASIC Encoding, John Wiley & Curriculum, New York, 1987.

UPDATES

Outline 1994 Kurtz was made wonderful Fellow of the ACM (MRW, 2012).

Portrait replaced (MRW, 2013)