On 19 November 2001 I got a letter from the IEEE President, Joel B. Snyder, telling me that: "...the IEEE Board of Directors has named you co-recipient of the 2002 IEEE John von Neumann Medal, along with Ole-Johan Dahl with the following citation: "For the introduction of the concepts underlying object-oriented program-ming through the design and implementation of SIMULA 67."
The ACM 2001 Turing Award Then, on 4 January 2002, I got a telephone from Professor Stephen A. Cook in Toronto, informing me that Ole-Johan and I had received the ACM Turing Award.
"New
York, February 5, 2002...The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
has presented the 2001 A.M. Turing Award, considered the "Nobel
Prize of Computing," to Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard of Norway
for their role in the invention of object-oriented programming, the
most widely used programming model today. Their work has led to a fundamental
change in how software systems are designed and programmed, resulting
in reusable, reliable, scalable applications that have streamlined the
process of writing software code and facilitated software programming." As you will understand, Ole-Johan and I feel very honoured by receiving these awards. The COOL Project (Comprehensive Object-Oriented Learning) is a 3-year research project proposal launched by by a consortium of four Norwegian research institutions, supported by research institutions in Aarhus in Denmark, and co-operating with test sites around the world. COOL
will contribute to a unifying process- and object-oriented platform for
informatics, and produce a "Learning Landscape" of pedagogical
and organisational components to be used in a modern and system-oriented
education in informatics and related fields. It will provide an alternative
to the current pedagogical approach used, commonly regarded as unsuccessful.
COOL will co-operate with research institutions in Denmark and with a
number of test sites (universities and colleges) around the world, representing
a number of language/cultural worlds (Spanish/South American, English/North
American, Scandinavian, and perhaps others). COOL will produce an introductory
course, supported by a textbook and DVD records containing integrated
multimedia material. The COOL Learning Landscape shall allow for alternative
courses, adapted to local cultures and conditions. "Object-Oriented
Reasoning and Working Style"
Companies and institutions interested may contact me at kristen@simula.no
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I never studied law. On
20 February 1948 I arrived, as a soldier 21 years old, at the Norwegian
Defense Research Establishment (NDRE) at Kjeller outside Oslo. I was received
by my new boss Jan V. Garwick and I was (as I can see in retrospect) catapulted
into a career in informatics What had happened that caused this ? Early
Activities
In
May 1960 I moved with most of the people in the groups I had built in
OR from the NDRE to the Norwegian Computing Center (NCC), causing a fairly
big bang. NCC was a collection of sundry items of computing equipment,
notably the English Electric DEUCE. DEUCE had acoustic mercury delay lines
as main memory and was
A very brief description of the history of the SIMULA languages is found in the page on " How Object-Oriented Programming Began" . A more comprehensive one is in the SIMULA article in the book "History of Programming Languages". The article is OCR-ed and will appear soon on the site. SIMULA I was an immediate success as a simulation language, being used by the powerful companies and institutions that had the necessary resources in money, qualified staff and computing equipment. The analyses supported by SIMULA simulations often resulted in changes in organisation that impacted strongly upon the employees working conditions, their use of their own professional skills and the strength of their trade unions. Since my own sympathy was with the employees and their trade unions, I had to consider what I should do in this situation. I approached the trade unions and a groundbreaking project started: The "Iron and Metal Workers Project" spearheaded a series of research projects for the trade unions. The Norwegian "data and technology agreements" were important results of this development. (In the "Iron and Metal Project", Olav Terje Bergo was the other scientist in the team.) The SIMULA languages were extensively used for system description also in situations in which no simulation runs were made. Since SIMULA was designed as compilable and executable programming languages, it was not possible to describe continuous changes of state as well as interrupts and states determined by mathematical and other relations. The DELTA system description language addressed these tasks.(The other scientists in the team were Petter Haandlykken and Erik Holbæk-Hanssen.) Today the language seems to be a useful platform for description of many aspects of the interactions between human actors and computing equipment. (See the GOODS and STAGE projects below.) I This cooperation initiated my building up of a curriculum in System Development in Aarhus and Oslo, in cooperation between trade unions and researchers also in Denmark, and it triggered off the BETA language project. The trade union-related project showed us that the properties of an information system did not only depend upon the specifications stated but also on the characteristics of the actual implementation process. Thus, the system development processes must be studied as important elements in the class of the phenomena belonging to the domain of informatics. From 1974 on research in system development became a major part of my work. Associated with this effort was the building up of teaching and research groups in Oslo and Aarhus. The work of these and co-operating groups is often referred to as the "Scandinavian School" in system development. A summing up of this work is found in "Program Development As a Social Activity" Invited Lecture at IFIP '86, the World Congress of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies, Dublin 1986 While I was professor in Aarhus, a new basic research project in object-oriented language design was started together with Bent Bruun Kristensen, Ole Lehrmann Madsen (and later also Birger Møller-Pedersen). This, and follow-up efforts have been other major components of my work since. The name of the language is BETA for complex historical, but not necessarily good reasons. The language is very powerful and built upon a few very general concepts. It is implemented on a series of computers. I
left the Norwegian Computing Center in 1984, but continued to
keep close contact with the institute. When the GOODS Project (see
below) started giving Lars
Holden ,
Later the NCC joined the project through their STAGing Environment (STAGE) project. The results of the STAGE project are described in: Belsnes, D., Nygaard,K., Skretting, J. and Østerbye, K., 1998: "Staging Environments. Technical Annex to the Contract for the STAGE Project. Version 1.0". 57 pages.Norsk Regnesentral (Norwegian Computing Center), Oslo, November 1998. In many sciences, a platform of "core knowledge" is established, outlining its domain, key concepts and relating its subfields to each other. This is yet not the case in informatics. Even the name of the science is not universally agreed upon, and the terms "computer science" and "informatics" are not necessarily synonyms. In recent years I have been working on defining a platform for such an effort, based upon the basic concept of an "information process". I have a long and varied experience in producing research, mainly in teams, and in being tutor for Master's and Ph.D. degree students as well as teacher. My work has often been controversial when it was carried out, and I have had to handle many conflicts. Some of my experience is given in Advice to Young Researchers in Informatics (IRIS keynote 1996). Three groups will be active from the start of SRL, working in software engineering, scientific computing and communication technology. SRL is a member of the COOL consortium, and I will have an office there, also serving as a kind of revered weather-beaten figurehead. (This implies that I at the age of 75 have more offices than ever before in my life. Is this a sign of useful activity or of lack of concentration?) Morten Daehlen, the SRL Director (photo above) states the task of the SRL this way: "Information and communication technology (ICT) will be one of the key factors in the 21st century - it will transform the way we live, learn, work and entertain ourselves. Advances in computing and communication technologies create new infrastructures for business, scientific research, social interaction and public services (such as practice of health care). The rapidly expanding digital infrastructure will provide us with new tools for world-wide communication, and information will be available wherever we are and whenever we want. ICT will help us understand the world we live in - the natural environment and the secrets of the human body. Within this picture Simula Research Laboratory will perform basic research and device innovative solutions within selected areas of computer science". |
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