William Worthington Pugh Jr. (born 1960) is an American computer scientist who invented the

skip list In computer science, a skip list (or skiplist) is a probabilistic data structure that allows \mathcal(\log n) average complexity for search as well as \mathcal(\log n) average complexity for insertion within an ordered sequence of n elements. T ...

and the Omega test for deciding

Presburger arithmetic Presburger arithmetic is the first-order theory of the natural numbers with addition, named in honor of Mojżesz Presburger, who introduced it in 1929. The signature of Presburger arithmetic contains only the addition operation and equality, omit ...

. He was the co-author of the

static code analysis In computer science, static program analysis (or static analysis) is the analysis of computer programs performed without executing them, in contrast with dynamic program analysis, which is performed on programs during their execution. The term ...

tool

FindBugs FindBugs is an open-source static code analyser created by Bill Pugh and David Hovemeyer which detects possible bugs in Java programs. Potential errors are classified in four ranks: (i) scariest, (ii) scary, (iii) troubling and (iv) of concern ...

, and was highly influential in the development of the current memory model of the

Java language Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run any ...

. Pugh received a Ph.D. in computer science, with a minor in acting, 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 tea ...

. In 2012 he became professor emeritus of the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

's department of computer science in College Park. He is on the technical advisory board for the static analysis company

Fortify Software Fortify Software, later known as Fortify Inc., is a California-based software security vendor, founded in 2003 and acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2010, Micro Focus in 2017, and OpenText in 2022. Fortify offerings included Static application secu ...

External links

Website
American computer scientists Living people University of Maryland, College Park faculty 1960 births {{US-compu-bio-stub