Meir "Manny" Lehman,

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK a ...

(24 January 1925 – 29 December 2010) was a professor in the School of Computing Science at

Middlesex University Middlesex University London (legally Middlesex University and abbreviated MDX) is a public research university in Hendon, northwest London, England. The name of the university is taken from its location within the historic county boundaries ...

. From 1972 to 2002 he was a Professor and Head of the Computing Department at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

. His research contributions include the early realisation of the

software evolution Software evolution is the continual development of a piece of software after its initial release to address changing stakeholder and/or market requirements. Software evolution is important because organizations invest large amounts of money in the ...

phenomenon and the eponymous Lehman's laws of software evolution.

Career

Lehman was born in Germany on 24 January 1925 and emigrated to England in 1931. He studied

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

as an undergraduate at

where he was involved in the design of the Imperial College Computing Engine's Digital Computer Arithmetic Unit. He spent a year at

Ferranti Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was known ...

in London before working at Israel's Ministry of Defense from 1957 to 1964. From 1964 to 1972 he worked at IBM's research division in

Yorktown Heights, NY Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census. History Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in norther ...

where he studied program evolution with Les Belady. The study of IBM's programming process gave the foundations for Lehman's laws of software evolution. In 1972 he returned to Imperial College where he was Head of Section and later Head of Department (1979–1984). Lehman remained at Imperial for some thirty years until 2002 when he moved to the School of Computing Science at

. After retiring from Middlesex he moved to Jerusalem, Israel, where he died on 29 December 2010.

Awards and honours

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK and from aroun ...

(1989) *

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 ...

(1994) * Harlan D. Mills Award (2001)

References

*M.M. Lehman. "Programs, life cycles, and laws of software evolution", '' Proceedings of the IEEE'', pages 1060–1076, September 1980 * Laszlo Belady, M. M. Lehman: A Model of Large Program Development. IBM Systems Journal 15(3): 225–252 (1976)

External links

FEAST PublicationsIEEExplore

Salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...

, 2002. *
Manny Lehman's Home PageLehman's official academic archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lehman, Meir Manny 1925 births 2010 deaths Academics of Middlesex University Academics of the Department of Computing, Imperial College London British computer scientists British software engineers Software engineering researchers