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Robert Sedgewick (computer scientist)

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Template:Short description {{#invoke:Other people|otherPeople}} Template:Infobox scientist

Robert Sedgewick (born December 20, 1946) is an American computer scientist. He is the founding chair and the William O. Baker Professor in Computer Science at Princeton University<ref>Robert Sedgewick's homepage at Princeton</ref> and was a member of the board of directors of Adobe Systems (1990–2016).<ref>Forbes profile</ref> He previously served on the faculty at Brown University and has held visiting research positions at Xerox PARC, Institute for Defense Analyses, and INRIA.<ref>Informit - Robert Sedgewick</ref> His research expertise is in algorithm science, data structures, and analytic combinatorics. He is also active in developing college curriculums in computer science.<ref>People of ACM - Robert Sedgewick</ref>

Early lifeEdit

Sedgewick was born on December 20, 1946, in Willimantic, Connecticut. During his childhood he lived in Storrs, Connecticut, where his parents Charles Hill Wallace Sedgewick and Rose Whelan Sedgewick were professors at the University of Connecticut.<ref>Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's</ref>

In 1958, he moved with his parents to Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., where he attended Wheaton High School, graduating in 1964.

EducationEdit

Sedgewick earned his Bachelor of Science (1968) and Master of Science (1969) degrees in applied mathematics from Brown University, where he was a student of Andries van Dam. He went on to graduate work at Stanford University where he was an advisee of Donald E. Knuth, receiving his PhD in 1975.<ref>Robert Sedgewick at the Mathematics Genealogy Project</ref> His thesis was entitled Quicksort and was named an outstanding dissertation in computer science.<ref>Outstanding dissertations in computer science, vol 18 (Garland)</ref>

Work and academic careerEdit

Sedgewick returned to Brown to start his academic career as an assistant professor in 1975, with promotion to associate professor in 1980 and full professor in 1983. At Brown, he participated in the founding of the computer science department, in 1979.<ref>A Brief History of the CS Department (Brown University)</ref>

In 1985, Sedgewick joined the faculty at Princeton University as founding chair of the Department of Computer Science<ref>Computer Science building opens (Princeton Weekly Bulletin)</ref> where he later became the William O. Baker '39 Professor of Computer Science.<ref>30 years of Computer Science at Princeton</ref> The first-year courses in computer science that he developed at Princeton became quite popular.<ref>The New 'Rithmetic: Computer Science (US1 Princeton)</ref> He also replaced live lectures with on-demand online videos.<ref>Computer Science for All, Really (Princeton CS Department)</ref>

Throughout his career, he has worked at research institutions outside of academia during summers and sabbatical leaves:

Research and writingEdit

Sedgewick developed red–black trees (with Leonidas J. Guibas),<ref>A Dichromatic Framework for Balanced Trees. 19th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 1980.</ref> ternary search trees (with Jon Bentley),<ref>Ternary Search Trees. Dr. Dobbs Journal, March, 1998.</ref> and pairing heaps (with R. E. Tarjan and Michael Fredman).<ref>Pairing Heaps: A New Form of Self-Adjusting Heap. Algorithmica 1, 1, 1986.</ref> He solved open problems left by Donald Knuth in the analysis of quicksort,<ref>The Analysis of Quicksort Programs. Acta Informatica 7, 1977.</ref> shellsort,<ref>A New Upper Bound for Shellsort. Journal of Algorithms 7, 1986.</ref> heapsort (with R. Schaffer),<ref>The Analysis of Heapsort. J. of Algorithms, 1993.</ref> and Batcher's sort.<ref>Data Movement in Odd-Even Merging. SIAM Journal on Computing 7, 2, 1978.</ref> With Philippe Flajolet, he developed the field of mathematics known as analytic combinatorics.

He has organized research meetings and conferences on data structures, algorithm science, and analytic combinatorics around the world, including Dagstuhl seminars on analysis of algorithms and data structures,.<ref>Schloss Dagstuhl</ref> In particular, in 1993, together with Rainer Kemp, Philippe Flajolet and Helmut Prodinger, he initiated a series of workshops and conferences which was key to the development of a research community around the analysis of algorithms, and which evolved into the AofA—International Meeting on Combinatorial, Probabilistic, and Asymptotic Methods in the Analysis of Algorithms. Robert Sedgewick was also the main proponent and organizer of the first editions of the SIAM Meetings on Analytic Algorithmics and Combinatorics (ANALCO),<ref>ANALCO</ref> a series of meetings annually held from 2004 to 2019, co-located with the Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA).

PublishingEdit

Sedgewick is the author of twenty books, including Algorithms,<ref>Algorithms, 4th edition. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2011, Template:ISBN.</ref> originally published in 1983. His 2008 book with Philippe Flajolet, Analytic Combinatorics,<ref>Analytic Combinatorics. Cambridge University Press, 2009, Template:ISBN.</ref> was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize for mathematical exposition by the American Mathematical Society.<ref>https://www.ams.org/prizes-awards/paview.cgi?parent_id=26 (American Mathematical Society)</ref> More recently, he co-authored with Kevin Wayne the book Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach.<ref>Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2016, Template:ISBN.</ref>

Online learningEdit

Sedgewick has developed massive open online courses in his area.<ref>Professors Behind the MOOC Hype (Chronicle of Higher Education)</ref><ref>Coursera</ref><ref>cuvids</ref> With Kevin Wayne, he developed a model that integrates the textbook, studio-produced online lectures, and online content.<ref>A 21st Century Model for Disseminating Knowledge (MIT)</ref><ref>The 50 Most Popular MOOCs of All Time (Online Course Report)</ref> These have had over one million registrants.<ref>Coursera</ref> He advocates for expanding the reach of computer science,<ref>The Discipline that is Transforming Higher Ed (Chronicle of Higher Education)</ref><ref>Higher Education's Internet Revolution (American Enterprise Institute)</ref><ref>President Obama talks about teaching everyone to code. This professor does it. (Washington Post).</ref> with essays published in the Wall Street Journal<ref>Should All Children Learn to Code by the End of High School? (Wall Street Journal)</ref> and Inside Higher Ed.<ref>Why Every Student Should Study Computer Science (Inside Higher Ed)</ref>

AwardsEdit

Recent books and online contentEdit

  • Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach (with K. Wayne). Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2016, 1131 pp. Associated online content: Booksite, curated lectures Part 1 and Part 2, and MOOCs Part 1 and Part 2.
  • Algorithms, Fourth Edition (with K. Wayne). Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2011, 955 pp. Earlier editions: 11 books, using 5 programming languages, translated into many foreign languages, 1983–2003. Associated online content: Booksite, curated lectures, and MOOCs Part 1 and Part 2.
  • An Introduction to the Analysis of Algorithms, Second Edition (with P. Flajolet). Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2013, 572 pp. First edition, 1996. Associated online content: Booksite, curated lectures, and MOOC.
  • Analytic Combinatorics (with P. Flajolet). Cambridge University Press, 2009, 824pp. Associated online content: Booksite, curated lectures, and MOOC.

Personal lifeEdit

According to his personal website, Sedgewick lives in Princeton, New Jersey and spends summers in Jamestown, Rhode Island with his wife Linda (née Migneault), married in 1971. They have four children.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

BibliographyEdit

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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