Ken Kennedy (August 12, 1945 – February 7, 2007) was an American computer scientist and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

. He was the founding chairman of Rice's Computer Science Department.Rice University - Ken Kennedy home page
/ref> Kennedy directed the construction of several substantial

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

systems for programming

parallel Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of ...

computers, including an automatic vectorizer for Fortran 77, an integrated scientific programming environment,

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 tha ...

s for Fortran 90 and

High Performance Fortran High Performance Fortran (HPF) is an extension of Fortran 90 with constructs that support parallel computing, published by the ''High Performance Fortran Forum'' (HPFF). The HPFF was convened and chaired by Ken Kennedy of Rice University. The fi ...

, and a compilation system for domain languages based on the numerical computing environment

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

. He wrote over 200 articles and book chapters, plus numerous conference addresses. Kennedy was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 1990. He was named a Fellow of the AAAS in 1994 and of the ACM and

IEEE 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 operat ...

in 1995. In recognition of his achievements in compilation for high performance computer systems, he was honored as the recipient of the 1995 W. W. McDowell Award, the highest research award of the

IEEE Computer Society 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 ...

. From 1997 to 1999, he served as co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). In 1999, he was named recipient of the ACM

SIGPLAN SIGPLAN is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on programming languages. Conferences * Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) * Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) * International Symposium on ...

Programming Languages Achievement Award, the third time this award was given. In 2005, he was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

. Kennedy died of pancreatic cancer in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

at the age of 61. At the time of his death he was the John and Ann Doerr University Professor in the department of

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 practical disciplines (includi ...

Rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...

and the Director of the Center for High Performance Software Research (HiPerSoft). As of November 20, 2006, he had directed the PhD dissertations of 38 graduate students and masters theses for 8 students. Kennedy's last publication was ''The rise and fall of High Performance Fortran: an historical object lesson'', in which Kennedy discussed the general failure of the

language which he had championed. On November 18, 2009, the ACM and

awarded the first Ken Kennedy CS Award to Francine Berman of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The award was given at the ACM IEEE Supercomputing (or, "SC") '09 conference.

Bibliography

*Allen, Randy; Kennedy, Ken (2002). ''Optimizing Compilers for Modern Architectures: A Dependence-based Approach''. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. .

References

External links

Ken Kennedy's homepage
– at Rice University's Computer Science Department *
List of McDowell Award recipients
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, Ken 1945 births 2007 deaths American computer scientists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE New York University alumni Deaths from pancreatic cancer Deaths from cancer in Texas Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Rice University faculty Rice University alumni Researchers in distributed computing