Theo Härder (born August 28, 1945 in Bad Neustadt an der Saale,

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

) is a Professor of Computer Science at the

University of Kaiserslautern The University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (German: ''Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau'', also known as RPTU) is a public research university in Kaiserslautern and Landau in der Pfalz, Germany. The university wa ...

Life and career

Theo Härder studied

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 ...

at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the Technische Universität Darmstadt, earning his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

there in 1975. In 1976 he moved to the IBM Research - Almaden in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

. In 1977 he returned to TU Darmstadt as a professor at the Department of Computer Science. In 1980 he accepted an appointment at the University of Kaiserslautern in computer science.

Accomplishments

Härder has received numerous awards for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

s. He participated in the development of System R, the first

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

management system. In 1983, he and Andreas Reuter coined the acronym

ACID An acid is a molecule or ion capable of either donating a proton (i.e. Hydron, hydrogen cation, H+), known as a Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory, Brønsted–Lowry acid, or forming a covalent bond with an electron pair, known as a Lewis ...

to describe the essential characteristics of a distributed relational database (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability). These four properties, atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID), describe the major highlights of the transaction paradigm, which has influenced many aspects of development in database systems.

Awards

Konrad Zuse Medal, 2001

Honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

from Universität Oldenburg, 2002

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harder, Theo German computer scientists 1945 births Living people Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Academic staff of Technische Universität Darmstadt