Edward Grady "Ed" Coffman Jr. is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He began his career as a systems programmer at the

System Development Corporation System Development Corporation (SDC) was a computer software company based in Santa Monica, California. Initially created as a division of the RAND Corporation in December 1955 (under the name System Development Division) and established as an ind ...

(SDC) during the period 1958–65. His PhD in engineering at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

in 1966 was followed by a series of positions at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

(1966–69), The

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 Pennsyl ...

(1970–76),

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

(1976–77), and the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

(1977–79). In 1979, he joined the Mathematics Center at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...

where he stayed until his retirement as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff 20 years later. After a one-year stint at the

New Jersey Institute of Technology New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is a Public university, public research university in Newark, New Jersey, United States, with a graduate-degree-granting satellite campus in Jersey City. Founded in 1881 with the support of local indust ...

, he returned to

in 2000 with appointments in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, and Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. He retired from teaching in 2008 and is now a professor emeritus still engaged in research and professional activities.

Research

Coffman is best known for his seminal research together with his international collaborations, measured in part by some 150 co-authors in his collection of publications. His work can be found in over 180 articles in technical journals devoted to original research contributions. He published 4 graduate-level text books, and papers in the proceedings of some 250 conferences and workshops, most of these being preliminary versions of journal articles. In his research, Coffman has been a generalist following many parallel paths in engineering and applied mathematics. The directions he has taken have drawn on the tools of combinatorial optimization and the theory of algorithms, along with those of applied probability and stochastic processes. The processes studied include those in the theories of

scheduling A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things ...

, bin packing, sequential selection,

graphs Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties * Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discre ...

, and

dynamic allocation In computer science, manual memory management refers to the usage of manual instructions by the programmer to identify and deallocate unused objects, or garbage. Up until the mid-1990s, the majority of programming languages used in industry suppo ...

, along with those in

queueing Queue areas are places in which people queue (first-come, first-served) for goods or services. Such a group of people is known as a ''queue'' (British usage) or ''line'' ( American usage), and the people are said to be waiting or standing ''i ...

, polling, reservation, moving-server, networking, and distributed local-rule systems (e.g.

cellular automata A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...

). His contributions have been divided between mathematical foundations and the design and analysis of

approximation algorithms In computer science and operations research, approximation algorithms are efficient algorithms that find approximate solutions to optimization problems (in particular NP-hard problems) with provable guarantees on the distance of the returned sol ...

providing the basis for engineering solutions to

NP-hard In computational complexity theory, a computational problem ''H'' is called NP-hard if, for every problem ''L'' which can be solved in non-deterministic polynomial-time, there is a polynomial-time reduction from ''L'' to ''H''. That is, assumi ...

problems. Computer and network engineering applications have been broad in scope; a partial list includes research addressing problems in the scheduling and storage allocation functions of computer

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

, storage architectures,

data structures In computer science, a data structure is a data organization and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, and the functi ...

, computer timing problems such as deadlocks and

synchronization Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the Conductor (music), conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are sa ...

, Internet congestion,

peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program th ...

networks, stream merging,

self-assembly Self-assembly is a process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction. When the ...

processes of molecular computing, minimalist algorithms in

sensor networks Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental ...

optical burst switching Optical burst switching (OBS) is an optical telecommunication, optical networking technique that allows dynamic sub-wavelength switching of data. OBS is viewed as a compromise between the yet unfeasible full optical packet switching (OPS) and the mo ...

, and

dynamic spectrum management Dynamic spectrum management (DSM), also referred to as dynamic spectrum access (DSA), is a set of techniques based on theoretical concepts in network information theory and game theory that is being researched and developed to improve the performan ...

cognitive networks In communication networks, cognitive network (CN) is a new type of data network that makes use of cutting edge technology from several research areas (i.e. machine learning, knowledge representation, computer network, network management) to solve ...

. The list expands greatly when including the myriad applications in industrial engineering and operations research of Coffman's research in scheduling and bin-packing theory in one and two dimensions. As of 11 November 2015, his works have been cited 13,597 times, and he has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

of 55. Coffman has been active professionally serving on several editorial boards, dozens of technical program committees, setting research agendas in workshops of the National Research Council, co-founding the

Symposium on Operating Systems Principles In Ancient Greece, the symposium (, ''sympósion'', from συμπίνειν, ''sympínein'', 'to drink together') was the part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, o ...

, and the special interest groups on performance evaluation of both ACM and IFIPS.

Selected publications

* 1964, with Jules Schwartz and Clark Weissman. "A General Purpose Time-Sharing System". Spartan Books.A General Purpose Time-Sharing System
columbia.edu * 1973, with Peter Denning. ''Operating Systems Theory''. Prentice-Hall. * 2022, with Lycee Pierre de Fermat. ''Prof de NSI''. Bernard ONNO.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coffman, Edward G. 1994 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Theoretical computer scientists Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty 1934 births Living people

Research

Selected publications

See also

References