Andrew Wilson Appel (born 1960) is the Eugene Higgins Professor 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 Applied science, practical discipli ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. He is especially well-known because of his

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 ...

books, the ''Modern Compiler Implementation in ML'' () series, as well as ''Compiling With Continuations'' (). He is also a major contributor to the

Standard ML of New Jersey Standard ML of New Jersey (SML/NJ; Standard Meta-Language of New Jersey) is a free and open-source compiler and programming environment for the Standard ML programming language. Aside from its runtime system, which is written in C, SML/NJ is wr ...

compiler, along with

David MacQueen David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...

, John H. Reppy, Matthias Blume and others and one of the authors of ''

Rog-O-Matic Rog-O-Matic is a bot developed in 1981 to play and win the video game ''Rogue'', by four graduate students in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh: Andrew Appel, Leonard Hamey, Guy Jacobson and Michael Loren ...

''.

Biography

Andrew Appel is the son of mathematician

Kenneth Appel Kenneth Ira Appel (October 8, 1932 – April 19, 2013) was an American mathematician who in 1976, with colleague Wolfgang Haken at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, solved one of the most famous problems in mathematics, the four-c ...

, who proved the

Four-Color Theorem In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. ''Adjacent'' means that two regions sha ...

in 1976. Appel graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

in 1981 after completing a senior thesis, titled "Investigation of galaxy clustering using an asymptotically fast N-body algorithm", under the supervision of Nobel laureate James Peebles. He later received a Ph.D. (computer science) at

Carnegie-Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, in 1985. He became an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

in 1998, due to his research of programming languages and

s. In 1981, Appel developed a better approach to the

n-body problem In physics, the -body problem is the problem of predicting the individual motions of a group of celestial objects interacting with each other gravitationally.Leimanis and Minorsky: Our interest is with Leimanis, who first discusses some histor ...

linearithmic In computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations performed by ...

instead of quadratic time. From July 2005 to July 2006, he was a visiting researcher at the ''

Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...

'' (INRIA), Rocquencourt,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, on sabbatical from Princeton University. Andrew Appel campaigns on issues related to the interaction of law and computer technology. He testified in the penalty phase of the Microsoft antitrust case in 2002. He is opposed to the introduction of some computerized

voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use ''electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defin ...

s, which he deemed untrustworthy. In 2007, he received attention when he purchased a number of voting machines for the purpose of investigating their security.

References

External links

Website at Princeton
1960 births Living people American computer scientists Carnegie Mellon University alumni Princeton University faculty Programming language researchers {{US-compu-bio-stub