Barbara Liskov

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Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939, as Barbara Jane Huberman) is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the introduction of abstract data types and the accompanying principle of data abstraction, along with the Liskov substitution principle, which applies these ideas to object-oriented programming, subtyping, and inheritance. Her work was recognized with the 2008 Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science.

Liskov is one of the earliest women to have been granted a doctorate in computer science in the United States, and the second woman to receive the Turing award. She is currently an Institute Professor and Ford Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<ref name="turing">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="PMG">Barbara Liskov, Programming Methodology Group, MIT.</ref>

Early life and educationEdit

Liskov was born November 7, 1939, in Los Angeles, California,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> the eldest of Jane (née Dickhoff) and Moses Huberman's four children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics with a minor in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. At Berkeley, she had only one other female classmate in her major.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She applied to graduate mathematics programs at Berkeley and Princeton. At the time Princeton was not accepting female students in mathematics.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> She was accepted at Berkeley but instead moved to Boston and began working at Mitre Corporation, where she became interested in computers and programming. She worked at Mitre for one year before taking a programming job at Harvard working on language translation.<ref name=":0" />

She then decided to go back to school and applied again to Berkeley, but also to Stanford and Harvard. In March 1968 she became one of the first women in the United States to be awarded a Ph.D. from a computer science department when she was awarded her degree from Stanford University.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Profile from the National Academies of Engineering.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} PhDs granted at UW-Madison Computer Sciences Department.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At Stanford, she worked with John McCarthy and was supported to work in artificial intelligence.<ref name=":0" /> The topic of her Ph.D. thesis was a computer program to play chess endgames for which she developed the important killer heuristic.<ref>Template:Cite report</ref>

CareerEdit

After graduating from Stanford, Liskov returned to Mitre to work as research staff.<ref name="turing" />

Liskov has led many significant projects, including the Venus operating system, a small, low-cost timesharing system; the design and implementation of CLU; Argus, the first high-level language to support implementation of distributed programs and to demonstrate the technique of promise pipelining; and Thor, an object-oriented database system. With Jeannette Wing, she developed a particular definition of subtyping, commonly known as the Liskov substitution principle. She leads the Programming Methodology Group at MIT, with a current research focus in Byzantine fault tolerance and distributed computing.<ref name="PMG"/> She was on the inaugural Engineering and Computer Science jury for the Infosys Prize in 2009.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Recognition and awardsEdit

Liskov is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 2002, she was recognized as one of the top women faculty members at MIT, and among the top 50 faculty members in the sciences in the U.S.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Liskov as one of the 50 most important women in science.<ref name="Svitil">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2004, Barbara Liskov won the John von Neumann Medal for "fundamental contributions to programming languages, programming methodology, and distributed systems".<ref>IEEE John von Neumann Medal Recipients from the website of IEEE</ref> On 19 November 2005, Barbara Liskov and Donald E. Knuth were awarded ETH Honorary Doctorates.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Liskov and Knuth were also featured in the ETH Zurich Distinguished Colloquium Series.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the University of Lugano in 2011<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 2018.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Liskov received the 2008 Turing Award from the ACM in March 2009,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> for her work in the design of programming languages and software methodology that led to the development of object-oriented programming.<ref name="dr dobbs">Barbara Liskov Wins Turing Award | March 10, 2009 from the Dr. Dobb's Journal website</ref> Specifically, Liskov developed two programming languages, CLU<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> in the 1970s and Argus<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> in the 1980s.<ref name="dr dobbs" /> The ACM cited her contributions to the practical and theoretical foundations of "programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2012 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2023 Liskov was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute for "seminal contributions to computer programming languages and methodology, enabling the implementation of reliable, reusable programs".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Selected worksEdit

Liskov is the author of five books as of February 2023 and over one hundred technical papers.

BooksEdit

Selected papersEdit

Personal lifeEdit

Liskov is Jewish.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1970, she married Nathan Liskov.<ref name=":0" /> They have one son, Moses, who earned a PhD in computer science from MIT in 2004 and teaches computer science at the College of William and Mary.<ref name="turing"/>