Guy Lewis Steele Jr. (; born October 2, 1954) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer programming languages and technical standards.

Biography

Steele was born in Missouri and graduated from the

Boston Latin School The Boston Latin School is a public exam school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established on April 23, 1635, making it both the oldest public school in the British America and the oldest existing school in the United States. Its curriculum f ...

in 1972. He received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in applied mathematics from Harvard University (1975) and a Master's degree (M.S.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in computer science (1977, 1980). He then worked as an assistant professor of computer science at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and a compiler implementer at Tartan Laboratories. Then he joined the

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

company Thinking Machines, where he helped define and promote a

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

version of the

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

programming language named *Lisp (Star Lisp) and a parallel version of the language C named C*. In 1994, Steele joined

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

and was invited by Bill Joy to become a member of the Java team after the language had been designed, since he had a track record of writing good specifications for extant languages. He was named a Sun Fellow in 2003. Steele joined

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

in 2010 when Oracle acquired

Works

While at MIT, Steele published more than two dozen papers with Gerald Jay Sussman on the subject of the language Lisp and its implementation (the

Lambda Papers The history of the programming language Scheme begins with the development of earlier members of the Lisp family of languages during the second half of the twentieth century. During the design and development period of Scheme, language designers ...

). One of their most notable contributions was the design of the language

Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea. Scheme or schemer may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series * The Scheme (band), an English pop band * ''The Schem ...

. Steele also designed the original command set of

Emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

and was the first to port TeX (from WAITS to ITS). He has published papers on other subjects, including compilers, parallel processing, and constraint languages. One song he composed has been published in the official journal of the Association for Computing Machinery '' Communications of the ACM'' (CACM) ("The Telnet Song", April 1984, a parody of the behavior of a series of PDP-10 TELNET implementations written by Mark Crispin). Steele has served on accredited technical standards committees, including: Ecma International (formerly European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA)) TC39 (for the language ECMAScript, for which he was editor of the first edition),

X3J11 ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and t ...

(for C), and X3J3 (for Fortran) and is, , chairman of

X3J13 X3J13 is the name of a technical committee which was part of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS, then named ''X3''). The X3J13 committee was formed in 1986 to draw up an American National Standards Institute (A ...

(for

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fro ...

). He was also a member of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE) working group that produced the IEEE Standard for the language Scheme, IEEE Std 1178-1990. He represented Sun Microsystems in the High Performance Fortran Forum, which produced the High Performance Fortran specification in May, 1993. In addition to specifications of the language Java, Steele's work at Sun Microsystems has included research in parallel algorithms, implementation strategies, and architecture and software support. In 2005, Steele began leading a team of researchers at Sun developing a new language named

Fortress A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

, a high-performance language designed to obsolete Fortran.

Books

In 1982, Steele edited ''The Hacker's Dictionary'' (Harper & Row, 1983; ), which was a print version of the

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET A ...

. Steele and Samuel P. Harbison wrote ''C: A Reference Manual'', (

Prentice-Hall Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari B ...

, 1984; ), to provide a precise description of the language C, which Tartan Laboratories was trying to implement on a wide range of systems. Both authors participated in the

American National Standards Institute The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...

(ANSI) C standardization process; several revisions of the book were issued to reflect the new standard. On 16 March 1984, Steele published '' Common Lisp the Language'' (Digital Press; ; 465 pages). This first edition was the original specification of

(CLtL1) and served as the basis for the ANSI standard. Steele released a greatly expanded second edition in 1990, (1029 pages) which documented a near-final version of the ANSI standard. Steele, along with Charles H. Koelbel, David B. Loveman, Robert S. Schreiber, and Mary E. Zosel wrote ''The High Performance Fortran Handbook'' (MIT Press, 1994; ). Steele also coauthored all three editions of ''The Java Language Specification'' (Addison-Wesley, third ed. 2005; ) with James Gosling, Bill Joy, and Gilad Bracha.

Awards

Steele received the

ACM ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...

in 1988. He was named an ACM Fellow in 1994, a member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States of America in 2001 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. He received the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award in 2005.

Other activities

Steele is a modern western square dancer and caller from Mainstream up through C3A, a member of Tech Squares, and a member of Callerlab. Under the pseudonym ''Great Quux'', which was an old student nickname at the

and MIT, he has published light verse and "Crunchly" cartoons; a few of the latter appeared in ''The New Hacker's Dictionary''. He has also used his initials (GLS). In 1998, Steele solved the game Teeko via computer, showing what must occur if both players play wisely; he found that neither player can force a win. He also showed that the Advanced Teeko variant is a win for Black (again, assuming perfect play), as is one other variant, but the other fourteen variants are draws.

References

External links

* *
Sun/Oracle biographical page for SteeleA podcast interview with Guy Steele on Software Engineering Radio"Growing a Language", Keynote at the 1998 ACM OOPSLA Conferencetext

Guy Steele: Dan Friedman--Cool Ideas (Dan Friedman's 60th Birthday)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steele, Guy L. Jr. 1954 births American computer scientists American technology writers Lisp (programming language) people Carnegie Mellon University faculty Emacs Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates MIT School of Engineering alumni Programming language designers Programming language researchers Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni