Bertrand Meyer (; ; born 21 November 1950) is a French academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the

Eiffel programming language Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer (an object-orientation proponent and author of '' Object-Oriented Software Construction'') and Eiffel Software. Meyer conceived the language in 1985 with the goal of i ...

and the idea of design by contract.

Education and academic career

Meyer received a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in engineering from the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

in Paris, a second master's degree from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, and a PhD from the Université de Nancy. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at Électricité de France, and for three years was a member of the faculty of the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

. From 2001 to 2016, he was professor of software engineering at

ETH Zürich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he pursued research on building trusted components (reusable software elements) with a guaranteed level of quality. He was Chair of the ETH Computer Science department from 2004 to 2006 and for 13 years (2003–2015) taught the Introduction to Programming course taken by all ETH computer science students, resulting in a widely disseminated programming textbook, '' Touch of Class'' (Springer). He remains Professor emeritus of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich and is currently Professor of Software Engineering and Provost at the

Schaffhausen Institute of Technology Constructor, formerly known as Schaffhausen Institute of Technology (SIT) is a private non-profit institute in Switzerland founded in 2019 by entrepreneur Serguei Beloussov. History The institute focuses on computer and software sciences and i ...

(SIT), a new research university in

Schaffhausen Schaffhausen (; gsw, Schafuuse; french: Schaffhouse; it, Sciaffusa; rm, Schaffusa; en, Shaffhouse) is a list of towns in Switzerland, town with historic roots, a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in northern Switzerland, and the ...

, Switzerland. He has held visiting positions at the

University of Toulouse The University of Toulouse (french: Université de Toulouse) was a university in the French city of Toulouse that was established by papal bull in 1229, making it one of the earliest universities to emerge in Europe. Suppressed during the Frenc ...

(Chair of Excellence, 2015–16),

Politecnico di Milano The Polytechnic University of Milan () is the largest technical university in Italy, with about 42,000 students. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and higher education courses in engineering, architecture and design. Founded in 18 ...

, Innopolis University,

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...

and

University of Technology Sydney The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Although its origins are said to trace back to the 1830s, the university was founded in its current form in 1988. As of 2021 ...

. He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker. For many years Meyer has been active in issues of research and education policy and was the founding president (2006–2011) of

Informatics Europe Informatics Europe is the European association of university departments and research laboratories, in the field of informatics (also known as computer science). Overview Founded in 2006,Bertrand Meyer and Willy Zwaenepoel, ''European Computer Sci ...

, the association of European computer science departments.

Computer languages

Meyer pursues the ideal of simple, elegant and user-friendly computer languages and is one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...

(OOP). His book ''

Object-Oriented Software Construction ''Object-Oriented Software Construction'' is a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming. The first edition was published in 1988; the second, extensively revised and expanded edition (more than ...

'' is one of the earliest and most comprehensive works presenting the case for OOP. Other books he has written include ''Eiffel: The Language'' (a description of the Eiffel language), ''Object Success'' (a discussion of object technology for managers), ''Reusable Software'' (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions), ''Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages'', ''Touch of Class'' (an introduction to programming and software engineering) and ''Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly'' (a tutorial and critical analysis of agile methods). He has authored numerous articles and edited over 60 conference proceedings, many of them in the

Springer LNCS ''Lecture Notes in Computer Science'' is a series of computer science books published by Springer Science+Business Media since 1973. Overview The series contains proceedings, post-proceedings, monographs, and Festschrifts. In addition, tutorials ...

(Lecture Notes in Computer Science) series. He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution, and is the originator of the Design by Contract development method. His experiences with object technology through the Simula language, as well as early work on

abstract data types In computer science, an abstract data type (ADT) is a mathematical model for data types. An abstract data type is defined by its behavior (semantics) from the point of view of a '' user'', of the data, specifically in terms of possible values, ...

and

formal specification In computer science, formal specifications are mathematically based techniques whose purpose are to help with the implementation of systems and software. They are used to describe a system, to analyze its behavior, and to aid in its design by verif ...

(including the

Z notation The Z notation is a formal specification language used for describing and modelling computing systems. It is targeted at the clear specification of computer programs and computer-based systems in general. History In 1974, Jean-Raymond Abria ...

), provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel.

Contributions

Meyer is known among other contributions for the following: * The concept of Design by Contract, highly influential as a design and programming methodology concept and a language mechanism present in such languages as the

Java Modeling Language The Java Modeling Language (JML) is a specification language for Java programs, using Hoare style pre- and postconditions and invariants, that follows the design by contract paradigm. Specifications are written as Java annotation comments to th ...

, Spec#, the

UML The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

Object Constraint Language The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a declarative language describing rules applying to Unified Modeling Language (UML) models developed at IBM and is now part of the UML standard. Initially, OCL was merely a formal specification language ex ...

and Microsoft's Code Contracts. * The design of the Eiffel language, applicable to programming as well as design and requirements. * The early publication (in the first, 1988 edition of his ''

'' book) of such widely used design patterns as the

command pattern In object-oriented programming, the command pattern is a behavioral design pattern in which an object is used to encapsulate all information needed to perform an action or trigger an event at a later time. This information includes the method name ...

(the basis for undo-redo mechanisms, i.e. CTRL-Z/CTRL-Y, in interactive systems) and the bridge pattern. * The original design (in collaboration with

Jean-Raymond Abrial Jean-Raymond Abrial (born 1938) is a French computer scientist and inventor of the Z and B formal methods. Abrial's 1974 paper ''Data Semantics'' laid the foundation for a formal approach to Data Models; although not adopted directly by practit ...

and Steven Schuman) of the Z specification language. * His establishment of the connection between object-oriented programming and the concept of software reusability (in his 1987 paper ``Reusability: the Case for Object-Oriented Design''. * His critical analysis of the pros and cons of agile development and his development of software lifecycle and management models.

Awards

Meyer is a member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

and the

French Academy of Technologies The National Academy of Technologies of France (''Académie des technologies'') is a learned society, founded in 2000, with an emphasis on technology, and the newest of French academies. In 2007 it acquired the status of ''établissement public'', w ...

and a

Fellow of the ACM A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

. He has received honorary doctorates from

ITMO University ITMO University (russian: Университет ИТМО) is a state-supported university in Saint Petersburg and is one of Russia's National Research Universities. ITMO University is one of 15 Russian universities that were selected to particip ...

in Saint Petersburg, Russia (2004) and the

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

, UK (2015). He was the first "senior award" winner of the AITO Dahl-Nygaard award in 2005. This prize, named after the two founders of object-oriented programming, is awarded annually to a senior and a junior researcher who has made significant technical contributions to the field of OOP. He is the 2009 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society

Harlan Mills Harlan D. Mills (May 14, 1919 – January 8, 1996) was Professor of Computer Science at the Florida Institute of Technology and founder of Software Engineering Technology, Inc. of Vero Beach, Florida (since acquired by Q-Labs). Mills' contri ...

award. In 2006, Meyer received the

Software System Award The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded by ...

of the ACM for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel.

Wikipedia hoax

On 28 December 2005, an anonymous user falsely announced Meyer's death on the German Wikipedia's biography of Meyer. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker and the article was immediately corrected. Many major news media outlets in Germany and Switzerland picked up the story. Meyer went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia,Bertrand Meyer: Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia, at
/ref> concluding "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."

References

External links

Bertrand Meyer home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Bertrand 1950 births Living people École Polytechnique alumni Academic staff of ETH Zurich Formal methods people Monash University faculty French computer scientists Software engineering researchers Programming language designers Programming language researchers Stanford University alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of Academia Europaea Computer science writers Nancy-Université alumni Dahl–Nygaard Prize