Alfred V. Aho has won the AM Turing Award 2020 for his research and influential text books on fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation. His books have educated generations of computer scientists.
The AM Turing Award is informally known as the "Nobel Prize of computing. Professor Aho shared the award with Jeffrey David Ullman, with whom he has been working together since 1967.
Speaking on the honour, Aho said that he is honoured and humbled to receive the prestigious award and that he is delighted that the award ACM recognizes the foundational importance of abstractions and algorithms in the design and implementation of programming languages.
Significance |
| The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) AM Turing Award carries a cash prize worth USD 1 million with financial support provided only by Google. The Turing Award is considered to be the most prestigious award in computer science. |
About Alfred V. Aho's work
• Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey David Ullman had started working together at Bell Labs in 1967. Their early work included developing efficient algorithms for analyzing and translating programming languages.
• Professor Aho is Lawrence Gussman Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Columbia University, while Jeffrey Ullman is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University.
• The two continued their collaboration for several decades and shaped the foundations of programming language theory and implementation, as well as algorithm design and analysis.
• They made fundamental contributions to the programming language compilers field through technical contributions and influential textbooks such as Principles of Compiler Design (1977) and The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms (1974).
• Their early joint work in algorithm design and analysis techniques had contributed significantly to the theoretical core of computer science that surfaced during the time period.
• Aho spent almost 30 years working at Bell Labs and ultimately became the Vice President of the Computing Sciences Research Center, the laboratory that invented UNIX, C and C++.
• He joined Computer Science Department at Columbia in 1995 and received the Great Teacher Award for 2003 from the Society of Columbia Graduates.
• He was again recognized for his teaching excellence in 2014 when he won the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association.
• He did his BS in Engineering Physics from Toronto University in 1963 and got his Master's and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from Princeton University in 1967.
About Turing Award |
| • The Turing Award has got its name from British mathematician Alan M. Turing, who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing. • The ACM A.M. Turing Award was established in 1966 and it is widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize of Computing”. • The Association for Computing Machinery confers the award every year to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community". • The first-ever recipient of the award was Alan Perlis and the first female recipient was Frances E. Allen, who was honoured in 2006. |
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