Richard Craig Holt (February 13, 1941 – April 12, 2019) was an American-

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

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 ...

Early life

Holt was born on in 1941 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to Vashti Young and C.P. Holt, but later moved to

Toronto, Canada Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor ...

. As a teenager, he competed in track and field. He graduated from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1964 in engineering physics. He spent a year in the

Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F. ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

, and then worked for IBM. He went back to Cornell and obtained a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

in 1970 under Alan Shaw.

Career

Holt joined the faculty at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

in 1970. In 1997, he joined the faculty of the University of Waterloo, where he remained until his retirement in 2014. Holt's main research areas were

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s and

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

, contributing many seminal results to each. His work includes foundational work on deadlock, development of several

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

s and compilation techniques. His

Turing programming language Turing is a high-level, general-purpose programming language developed in 1982 by Ric Holt and James Cordy, at University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. It was designed in order to help students taking their first computer science course learn ...

was used in universities and high schools in Canada and internationally. He also participated in the development of the Grok,

Euclid Euclid (; grc-gre, Wikt:Εὐκλείδης, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the ''Euclid's Elements, Elements'' trea ...

SP/k SP/k is a programming language developed circa 1974 by R.C. Holt, D.B. Wortman, D.T. Barnard and J.R. Cordy as a subset of the PL/I programming language designed for teaching programming. It was used for about a decade at over 40 universities, ...

, and S/SL programming languages. For many years, he ran a software company, Holt Software Associates (HSA), which created the Ready to Program environment still widely used in Canadian High Schools to teach programming. Holt served as president of Gravel Watch Ontario from 2003 until 2015. In the fall of 2005, he was named #16 on Computing Canada's list of top 30

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

movers and shakers in the country for the past 30 years. In 2017, Holt was awarded the OS-CAN/INFO-CAN Lifetime Achievement Award.

Death

Holt died on April 12, 2019, on Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada at the age of 78. He had

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

and

Lewy body dementia Lewy body dementias are two similar and common subtypes of dementia—dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD). Both are characterized by changes in thinking, movement, behavior, and mood. The two conditions have sim ...

in his later years.

Ric Holt Early Career Achievement Award

In 2019 the Mining Software Repositories conference, the flagship conference in the area of repository mining that has been co-founded by Ric Holt, has established the Ric Holt Early Career Achievement Award. The first awardees are Emad Shihab (2019; Concordia University), Alberto Bacchelli (2020; University of Zurich) and Bogdan Vasilescu (2021; Carnegie Mellon University).

References

External links