Out of their minds: the lives and discoveries of 15 great computer scientists

Abstract

From the Publisher: Imagine being able to ask Newton about falling apples or Euclid about his personal vision of geometry. In Out of their Minds, readers will hear the Newtons and Euclids of the computer age as they talk about their discoveries in information technology that have changed forever the way we live, work, and think about the world. Based on interviews by freelance writer Cathy Lazere and the expertise of computer scientist Dennis Shasha, Out of their Minds introduces readers to fifteen of the planet's foremost computer scientists, including eight winners of the Turing Award, computing's Nobel Prize. The scientists reveal themselves in fascinating anecdotes about their early inspirations and influences, their contributions to computer science, and their thoughts on its explosive future. These are the programmers whose work helps architects walk through virtual buldings, engineers manage factories, and cartoonists animate movie monsters. These are the mathematicians who invented many of the problem-solving techniques, languages, and architectures that enable the computer to extend the reaches of human insight. Some were inventors from their earliest years-designing spitball catapults, contributing satire to Mad magazine, and rearranging the periodic table of chemical compounds. Others were renegades or musicians. Along the path to adulthood and discovery, these explorers grappled with bureaucracies, political persecution, and academic dogma. Their lives span the 50-year history of computer science. To help explain the work of these pioneers, Shasha and Lazere fill in the historical background and distill the extraordinary discoveries of these thinkers into everyday conceptsthat nonscientists can readily understand. Detailed technical points are set off in boxes for perusal by readers wishing deeper explanations. In the final chapters Shasha and Lazere explore two intriguing questions: Is there a set of shared traits or experiences that characterizes the scientists out of whose minds computers came? How might the content of this book differ if it were to be written twenty-five years from now, in 2020? Dennis Shasha is a professor of computer science at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. His previous books include Database Tuning: A Principled Approach, and two mathematical detective stories, The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco, and Codes, Puzzles, and Conspiracy. Cathy Lazere is a freelance writer who specializes in international corporate finance and technology. She has worked as an editor at McGraw-Hill and Business International, a division of the Economist Group. Ms. Lazere holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.B.A. from New York University.