Celebrating Ed Clarke
Yesterday we had the wonderful announcement of Ed Clarke as co-winner of the 2007 Turing Award. The news was allowed to go public at 10am on Monday, February 4, 2008. Ed was extremely anxious to let the cat out of the bag after more than two stressful weeks of keeping the secret.
In the morning, his students and faculty colleagues were called to a meeting in the 7th-floor conference room. There, instead of chalk dust they found champagne! Randy Bryant (Dean of the School of Computer Science) was there, armed with his laptop, ready to spam all of SCS with the news at precisely 10am, simultaneously with the official announcement to the assembled group.
Ed gave a great speech, starting off with the expected thanks-yous to students, colleagues, and his especially his wife, Martha. He explained a bit of the history, going so far as to hand out hardcopies of the original EMC model-checking code that he wrote immediately after arriving at CMU. (Most of the code listings were snapped up by students.) In his remarks, Ed explained that he is a “home-grown” Turing winner, crediting the practical attitude at CMU as a major influence on his research. When we have a bigger, more “official” celebration for Ed, I hope that he will give the speech again, so that more people might hear it.
Ed’s comments were touching. And, of course I can’t let them go by without taking the opportunity to do a bit of bragging. ;-) I realize that this might be a bit annoying to non-CMUers, but hell, Turing Awards don’t happen every day…
Carnegie Mellon has three Turing winners on its active faculty roster — Raj Reddy, Manuel Blum, and Ed Clarke. This is more than any other university or research lab. (Yes, we’re keeping score. Berkeley, Cornell, MIT, and Weizmann are next, each with two active.) If you add in emeritus faculty, our total goes up to four, with Dana Scott (who remains in good contact with the department) — still more than anywhere else. For me, the opportunity to “rub elbows with the giants” of the field is one of the best aspects of being at CMU.
Why do we have so many Turing Award winners on our faculty? Well, we’re a pretty good place for doing great research, and we’re also a big place. There is strength in numbers, for sure. But I would say, also, that people just like being here. The very best researchers are able to find success at CMU, as well as stay active deep into their careers. And, importantly, people tend to stay put here. Sure, we have turnover in our faculty ranks, as one would expect in any “big-league” department with over 70 members on its roster (and something like 120 in SCS overall). But for the most part, there is an incredible amount of stability and — dare I say — a contentment that keeps people here.
The official announcement of the 2007 Turing Award can be found here.
Peter Lee @ February 5, 2008