Jerome Howard "Jerry" Saltzer (born October 9, 1939) 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 ...

Career

Jerry Saltzer received an ScD in

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from MIT in 1966. His dissertation '''Traffic Control in a Multiplexed System was advised by Fernando Corbató. In 1966, he joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. One of Saltzer's earliest involvements with computers was with MIT's

Compatible Time-Sharing System The Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) was the first general purpose time-sharing operating system. Compatible Time Sharing referred to time sharing which was compatible with batch processing; it could offer both time sharing and batch proces ...

in the early 1960s. In the later 1960s and early 1970s, he was one of the team leaders of the

Multics Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...

operating system project. Multics, though not particularly commercially successful in itself, has had a major impact on all subsequent operating systems; in particular, it was an inspiration for Ken Thompson to develop

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

. Saltzer's contributions to Multics included the now-standard kernel stack switching method of process switching, as well as oft-cited work on the security architecture for shared information systems. Saltzer led the Computer Systems Research group of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Computer Systems Research group was one of the key players in the development of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

and

ring network A ring network is a network topology in which each node connects to exactly two other nodes, forming a single continuous pathway for signals through each node – a ring. Data travels from node to node, with each node along the way handling ever ...

technology for

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

s. During this time, Saltzer patented the Proteon ProNet

. Another contribution in that area was the end-to-end principle in systems design, which is one of the important underlying principles that governs the operation of the Internet. From 1984 to 1988 Saltzer served as Technical Director of MIT's Project Athena. "Saltzer@mit.edu" is one of the few Athena usernames with a capital letter, and legend has it that several special case hacks were required to support this functionality. In September 1995 Saltzer retired from his full-time faculty position, but continued writing and teaching part-time at MIT.

Family

Saltzer is known to all (colleagues, students, friends and family) as "Jerry". In 1961 he married Marlys Anne Hughes. They have two children: Rebecca (born 1962) and Sarah (born 1963). He has two grandchildren: Hannah (born 1997), and Caroline (born 1999).

Other interests

Saltzer is also very interested in 19th century landscape art of the western United States; he has prepared the catalogue raisonné of the paintings of the painter

Frederick Ferdinand Schafer Frederick Ferdinand Schafer (August 16, 1839 - July 18, 1927) was a German-born American painter. He was born in Braunschweig, Germany and he emigrated to the United States in 1876, at age 37. He opened a studio on Montgomery Street in San Francis ...

( de).

Software

Saltzer has been the programmer, a designer, or the inspiration, for a number of important pieces of systems software, which are either still in use or have descendants still being used today: *

RUNOFF Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

, a very early text-formatting program which was the basis for roff and

nroff nroff (short for "new roff") is a text-formatting program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows. It is an integral part of the Unix help system, being used to fo ...

TYPSET TYPSET is an early document editor that was used with the 1964-released RUNOFF program, one of the earliest text formatting programs to see significant use. Of two earlier print/formatting programs DITTO and TJ-2, only the latter had, and intro ...

, the " Project MAC editor", was the first interactive text editor, developed to write documentationHistory of UNIVAC's ED processor (ED-1100)
/ref> * PCIP, the first TCP/IP stack for the IBM PC, which became the basis for a company called

FTP Software FTP Software, Inc., was an American software company incorporated in 1986 by James van Bokkelen, John Romkey (co-author of the MIT PC/IP package), Nancy Connor, Roxanne van Bokkelen (née Ritchie), Dave Bridgham, and several other founding sh ...

* Kerberos, an authentication protocol, part of Project Athena, still widely used today As Technical Director of Project Athena, he supported development of the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

, an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

windowing system, still used and developed on

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

systems.

References

External links

* *
home page
- Jerome H. Saltzer

- Jerome H. Saltzer ** {{DEFAULTSORT:Saltzer, Jerome H 1939 births Living people Saltzer, Jerome H. Saltzer, Jerome H. People from Nampa, Idaho Fellow Members of the IEEE Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering MIT School of Engineering alumni MIT School of Engineering faculty Multics people