Editing Alan Perlis (section)

==Biography==
Perlis was born to a [[Jewish]] family in [[Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]]. He graduated from [[Taylor Allderdice High School]] in 1939.<ref>{{cite web|title=A.M Turing Award Winners: Alan J. Perlis|url=https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/perlis_0132439.cfm|website=Association for Computing Machinery|access-date=January 21, 2018}}</ref> In 1943, he received his [[bachelor's degree]] in [[chemistry]] from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later renamed [[Carnegie Mellon University]]).

During [[World War II]], he served in the [[U.S. Army]], where he became interested in mathematics. He then earned both a [[master's degree]] (1949) and a [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] (1950) in [[mathematics]] at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT). His doctoral dissertation was titled "On [[Integral equation|Integral Equations]], Their Solution by Iteration and [[Analytic continuation|Analytic Continuation]]".

In 1952, he participated in [[Project Whirlwind]].<ref>National Academy of Engineering (1979) "Alan Jay Perlis" in: ''Memorial tributes''. Vol 10. p.168</ref> He joined the faculty at [[Purdue University]] and in 1956, moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was chair of mathematics and then the first head of the [[computer science]] department. In 1962, he was elected president of the [[Association for Computing Machinery]].

He was awarded the inaugural Turing Award in 1966, according to the citation, "for his influence in the area of advanced programming techniques and [[compiler]] construction." This is a reference to the work he had done on ''Internal Translator'' in 1956 (described by [[Donald Knuth]] as the first successful compiler), and as a member of the team that developed the programming language [[ALGOL]].

In 1971, Perlis moved to [[Yale University]] to take the chair of computer science and hold the Eugene Higgins chair. In 1977, he was elected to the [[National Academy of Engineering]].

In 1982, he wrote an article, "[[Epigrams on Programming]]", for the [[Association for Computing Machinery]]'s (ACM) [[SIGPLAN]] journal, describing in one-sentence distillations many of the things he had learned about programming over his career. The [[epigram]]s have been widely quoted.<ref>[http://cpsc.yale.edu/epigrams-programming Computer science quotations]</ref>
He remained at Yale until his death in 1990.