Leslie Lamport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Leslie Lamport | |
 |
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| Born | February 7, 1941 New York City, New York |
|---|---|
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions | Microsoft Research Compaq Digital Equipment Corporation SRI International |
| Alma mater | Brandeis University |
| Known for | LaTeX Byzantine fault tolerance Paxos algorithm |
| Notable awards | Dijkstra Prize IEEE John von Neumann Medal |
Dr. Leslie Lamport (born February 7, 1941 in New York City) is an American computer scientist. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he received a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Brandeis University, respectively in 1963 and 1972.[1] His dissertation was about singularities in analytic partial differential equations.[2] Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX.[3]
Professionally, Lamport worked as a computer scientist at Massachusetts Computer Associates, SRI International, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Compaq. In 2001 he joined Microsoft Research at Mountain View, California.[1]
Lamport’s research contributions have laid the foundations of the theory of distributed systems. Among his most notable papers are
- “Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System”,[4] which received the PODC Influential Paper Award in 2000,[5]
- “The Byzantine Generals Problem”,[6]
- “Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of a Distributed System”[7] and
- “The Part-Time Parliament”.[8]
These papers relate to such concepts as logical clocks (and the happened-before relationship) and Byzantine failures. They are among the most cited papers in the field of computer science[9] and describe algorithms to solve many fundamental problems in distributed systems, including:
- the Paxos algorithm for consensus,
- the bakery algorithm for mutual exclusion of multiple threads in a computer system that require the same resources at the same time and
- the snapshot algorithm for the determination of consistent global states.
Lamport is also known for his work on temporal logic, where he introduced the temporal logic of actions (TLA).[10][11] Among his more recent contributions is TLA+, a logic for specifying and reasoning about concurrent and reactive systems, that he describes in the book “Specifying Systems: The TLA+ Language and Tools for Hardware and Software Engineers”[12] and defines as a “quixotic attempt to overcome engineers' antipathy towards mathematics”.[13]
Lamport received four honorary doctorates from European universities: University of Rennes and Christian Albrechts University of Kiel in 2003, EPFL in 2004 and University of Lugano in 2006.[1] In 2004, he received the IEEE Piore Award.[14] In 2005, the paper “Reaching Agreement in the Presence of Faults”[15] received the Dijkstra Prize.[16]
Lamport is the author of the aphorism:[17]
“
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.”
[edit] See also
- Lamport signature - The Lamport one-time signature scheme is a method for constructing a digital signature.
- S/KEY - a one-time password system sometimes referred to as Lamport's scheme
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Lamport, Leslie (2006-12-19). My Writings. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (1972). "The Analytic Cauchy Problem with Singular Data". Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (1986). LaTeX: A Document Preparation System. Addison-Wesley. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (July 1978). “Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System”. Communications of the ACM 21 (7): 558–565.
- ^ Neiger, Gil (2003-01-23). PODC Influential Paper Award: 2000. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie; Robert Shostak, Marshall Pease (July 1982). “The Byzantine Generals Problem”. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 4 (3): 382–401.
- ^ Chandy, K. Mani; Leslie Lamport (February 1985). “Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of a Distributed System”. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 3 (1): 63–75.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (May 1998). “The Part-Time Parliament”. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 16 (2): 133–169.
- ^ Most cited articles in Computer Science (2006-09). Retrieved on 2007-10-08.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (1990-04-01). "A Temporal Logic of Actions". Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (May 1994). "The Temporal Logic of Actions". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 16 (3): 872–923.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (2002). Specifying Systems: The TLA+ Language and Tools for Hardware and Software Engineers. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-321-14306-X. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks keynote speaker biography. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
- ^ IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Pease, Marshall; Robert Shostak, Leslie Lamport (April 1980). “Reaching Agreement in the Presence of Faults”. Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery 27 (2).
- ^ Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing: 2005. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
- ^ Lamport, Leslie (1987-05-28). Distribution e-mail. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.
