Robert Floyd
Robert Floyd studied the liberal arts, mathematics, and physics at the
University of Chicago, earning a BA and BS degree. He spent ten years
as computer operator, programmer, and analyst, during which he
developed widely used methods for translating programming languages.
He has been a teacher and researcher in computer science since 1965,
first at Carnegie--Mellon University and now at Stanford University
(where he is a professor emeritus). He was also the first Grace
Murray Hopper Professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. His
inventions include algorithms for finding shortest paths in a network,
for parsing programming languages, for calculating quantiles, for
printing shades of gray on a dot printer, and for selection of random
permutations and combinations. He invented nondeterministic
programming and systematic methods of program verification. He was
given the Alan M. Turing Award of the Association for Computing
Machinery in 1978 and the I.E.E.E. Computer Pioneer award in 1992. He
is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the A.C.M.,
and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Nevertheless, he remains a simple unspoiled country boy.