John R. Mashey (born 1946) 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 ...

, director and entrepreneur.

Career

Mashey holds a Ph.D. in computer science from

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

, where he developed the ASSIST assembler language teaching software. He worked on the

PWB/UNIX The Programmer's Workbench (PWB/UNIX) is an early, now discontinued, version of the Unix operating system that had been created in the Bell Labs Computer Science Research Group of AT&T. Its stated goal was to provide a time-sharing working envir ...

operating system at Bell Labs from 1973 to 1983, authoring the

PWB shell The PWB shell (also known as the Mashey shell) was a Unix shell. History The PWB shell was a modified (and generally constrained to be upward-compatible) version of the Thompson shell with additional features to increase usability for programmin ...

, also known as the "Mashey Shell". He then moved to Silicon Valley to join Convergent Technologies, ending as director of software. He joined

MIPS Computer Systems MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides proce ...

in early 1985, managing

operating systems 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 inc ...

development, and helping design the MIPS

RISC In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...

architecture, as well as specific CPUs, systems and software. He continued similar work at Silicon Graphics (1992–2000), contributing to the design of the NUMAflex modular computer architecture using NUMAlink, ending as VP and chief scientist. Mashey was one of the founders of the

Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) is an American non-profit corporation that aims to "produce, establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set" of performance benchmarks for computers. SPEC was founded in 1988. SPEC be ...

(SPEC) benchmarking group, was an

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National Lecturer for four years, has been guest editor for '' IEEE Micro'', and one of the long-time organizers of the

Hot Chips 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 ...

conferences. He chaired technical conferences on operating systems and CPU chips, and gave public talks on software engineering, RISC design, performance benchmarking and supercomputing. He has been credited for being the first to spread the term and concept of

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

in the 1990s. He became a consultant for venture capitalists and high-tech companies and a trustee of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

in 2001. In 1997 he received

's firs
Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award for Computer Science and Engineering
In 2012, he received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award ("Flame Award") "for his contributions to the UNIX community since its early days". He has written articles for the '' Skeptical Inquirer'' regarding

climate change denial Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or th ...

. In 2010 he published a 250-page critical report on the

Wegman Report The Wegman Report (officially called the Ad Hoc Committee Report on the 'Hockey Stick' Global Climate Reconstruction) was prepared in 2006 by three statisticians led by Edward Wegman at the request of Rep. Joe Barton of the United States House Commi ...

. Mashey's report concluded that the Wegman Report contained plagiarized text. This story was featured in '' USA Today'', and he was interviewed in '' Science'' magazine, which stated that he was "spending his retirement years compiling voluminous critiques of what he calls the 'real conspiracy' to produce 'climate antiscience'." His research has investigated the secretive funding of climate contrarian thinktanks. Mashey blogs at

DeSmogBlog DeSmog, (formerly The DeSmogBlog) founded in January 2006, is an international journalism organization that focuses on topics related to climate change. DeSmog's emphasis is investigating and reporting on misinformation campaigns and organizatio ...

, which focuses on global warming. Mashey became a scientific and technical consultant for the

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...

in 2015.

Personal life

Mashey is married to Angela Hey, a Cambridge University and

Waterloo University The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

graduate with a Ph.D. from Imperial College, London.

References

Living people 1946 births Pennsylvania State University alumni Unix people Scientists at Bell Labs Silicon Graphics people American computer programmers {{Unix-stub