I first met Bob in 1969. He had just come to New York to join the systems staff at the Courant Institute. We had a CDC6600 back then, but our computing services were in the dark ages. Bob was hired to debug a homegrown time-sharing system that didn’t work. He turned out to be a perfect hire; Bob thoughtfully discarded the code and built the system afresh. Our acquaintance was casual for years. I was just aware that he was an outstanding systems implementor who was knowledgeable about music and film. His name also appeared at the top of the Institute chess ladder. That was no mean feat; the Institute had a number of Russian students back then, and most were strong players. Time passed, and our relationship grew. But we really got to know each other after we both became faculty members at NYU. Somehow, we started having discussions of all sorts: computer science, math, advising students, programming languages, research, chess, parenthood, children and family, growing up, music, film, restaurants, life, and doing the right thing. Whatever the topic, Bob always had something insightful to say. I have to confess that Bob was a hard study. His interests were broad, and he often used the power of metaphor and literary allusion to make a point. I recall several discussions where I struggled to keep up with what he was saying. As I came to understand over time, Bob had extremely high standards, and it is fair to suggest that there were times when he himself did not meet them. This was never a reason for him to give up, but rather to work harder. For example, Bob had felt that his mathematics background was inadequate, so he took some math classes. I never completely understood just why he thought that mathematics was so important to his research, but it is fair to say that mathematical ideas and paradigms influenced his work. Bob was especially proud of his programming version of finite differencing, which he invented to maintain program invariants and to generate efficient code. Very few systems researchers have as mathematical and high a level perspective about programming languages as Bob had. His was visionary. His research pursued very long term problems that almost no one thought could be solved. He started as an army of one, and built a system that semiautomatically transforms programs with great power and efficiency. This work covered many areas of expertise, and no matter what was needed, Bob stood ready to accept the challenges. It is no accident that a number of basic algorithms and algorithmic ideas came out of his research. And Bob carried this intensity and passion into his teaching and advisement. I think it fair to say that Bob caringly enriched his students with his uniquely big-picture approach to language research. You can tell a great deal about Bob from his students. I do not think anyone in our department ever managed to attract a brighter group than Bob’s. Jeff Ullman once commented that although he (Jeff) had had a very large number of students, there were very few for whom he can claim to have made a major impact. Jeff was actually commenting about how
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Jan 1, 2009
Zhang Yong-Jin + 1
Open Access
