Edsger W. Dijkstra

A Most Influential Programmer

Edsger W. Dijkstra in 1963

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was one of the most influential members of computing science’s founding generation. He made fundamental contributions in algorithm design, program design, programming languages, operating systems, distributed processing, formal specification and verification, design of mathematical arguments, and much more.

Dijkstra was intensely interested in teaching, and in the relationships between academic computing science and the software industry. During his forty-plus years as a computer scientist, which included positions in both academia and industry, Dijkstra’s contributions brought him many prizes and awards, including computing science’s highest honor, the ACM Turing Award.

Here is a timeline of Dijkstra's life & accomplishments:
  • 1930 - Born in Rotterdam, Netherlands
  • 1948 - Graduated high school with the highest possible marks in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology
  • 1952 - Became the Netherlands' first programmer
  • 1956 - Graduated from Leiden University in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics
  • 1959 - Received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam
  • 1959 - Published his work on the shortest path problem which he both formulated and solved in 1956
  • 1961 - Dijkstra first described the shunting-yard algorithm
  • 1962 - Proposed the semaphore mechanism for mutual exclusion algorithm, identified the deadlock problem and proposed the banker's algorithm that prevents deadlock
  • 1965 - Started the field of concurrent and distributed algorithms with his paper 'Solution of a Problem in Concurrent Programming Control'
  • 1968 - Published his seminal paper 'Cooperating sequential processes'
  • 1972 - Awarded the Association of Computing Machinery's Turing Award
  • 1973 - Joined the Burroughs Corporation as its Research Fellow
  • 1984 - Dijkstra accepted the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Austin
  • 1999 - Retired in Austin, Texas
  • 2002 - Died in Nuenen, Netherlands
To read more about Dijkstra visit the Wikipedia entry which served as the source of this tribute.