Michael Leonidas Dertouzos ( el, Μιχαήλ Λεωνίδας Δερτούζος; November 5, 1936 – August 27, 2001) was a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) and Director of the MIT

Laboratory for Computer Science Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

(LCS) from 1974 to 2001. Dertouzos predicted the expansion of computer use very early, and was one of the pioneers in many areas of technology. These included his contributions to

the Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web s ...

particularly through his visionary approach to ubiquitous computing.

Early life

Dertouzos was born in Athens, Greece. His father was an admiral in the Greek navy and the young Dertouzos often accompanied him aboard destroyers and submarines. This experience cultivated his interest in technology so that he learned Morse code, shipboard machinery, and mathematics at an early age. When he was 16, he came across

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Inst ...

's work on information theory and MIT's attempt to build a mechanical mouse robot; these were said to have driven him to study in the university. Dertouzos went to high school at Athens College. He came to the United States to study after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study electrical engineering. Dertouzos completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at the

University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...

in 1957 and 1959. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1964.

Career

After graduating, he immediately joined the faculty of MIT, where he stayed for the rest of his career. During Dertouzos's term, LCS innovated in a variety of areas, including RSA

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can de ...

, the

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

, the NuBus, the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

, and the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Dertouzos was instrumental in creating the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...

and bringing it to MIT. He was a firm supporter of the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborat ...

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

, and the FSF, and their continued presence at MIT. He was also the sponsor of Project Oxygen at MIT, which aimed to develop "pervasive, human-centered computing through a combination of specific user and system technologies". In 1968, he co-founded Computek, Inc., a manufacturer of graphics and intelligent terminals, with Marvin C. Lewis and Dr. Huber Graham. He died on August 27 2001 at Massachusetts General Hospital at the age of 64. He is buried at the

First Cemetery of Athens The First Cemetery of Athens ( el, Πρώτο Νεκροταφείο Αθηνών, ''Próto Nekrotafeío Athinón'') is the official cemetery of the City of Athens and the first to be built. It opened in 1837 and soon became a prestigious ceme ...

Honours

On November 5, 2018,

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

recognized him with a

doodle A doodle is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of random and abstract lines or shapes, generally without ever lift ...

Bibliography

*Dertouzos, '' The Unfinished Revolution: Human-Centered Computers and What They Can Do For Us'', 2001, . *Dertouzos, ''What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives'', 1997, . *"Communications, Computers and Networks", in '' Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks'', September, 1991 *(co-author), ''Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge'', 1989, .

References

External links

Oral history interview with Michael L. Dertouzos

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. Dertouzos discusses his research in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Project MAC's change under his direction to the Laboratory for Computer Science. The bulk of the interview concerns MIT's relationship with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and its

Information Processing Techniques Office The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research",Lyon, Matthew; Hafner, Katie (1999-08-19). ''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet'' (p. 39). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. was par ...

(IPTO). Topics include:

time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence ...

, distributive systems, networking, multiprocessing, the

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...