David Gelernter
Encyclopedia
David Hillel Gelernter is a professor of computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

. In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space
Tuple space
A tuple space is an implementation of the associative memory paradigm for parallel/distributed computing. It provides a repository of tuples that can be accessed concurrently. As an illustrative example, consider that there are a group of processors that produce pieces of data and a group of...

 coordination model, as embodied by the Linda
Linda (coordination language)
In computer science, Linda is a model of coordination and communication among several parallel processes operating upon objects stored in and retrieved from shared, virtual, associative memory...

 programming system. Bill Joy
Bill Joy
William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...

 cites Linda as the inspiration for many elements of JavaSpaces and Jini
Jini
Jini , also called Apache River, is a network architecture for the construction of distributed systems in the form of modular co-operating services.Originally developed by Sun, Jini was released under an open source license...

.

Biography

Gelernter received his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 and Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 degrees in classical Hebrew literature from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 in 1976 and his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook
State University of New York at Stony Brook
The State University of New York at Stony Brook, also known as Stony Brook University, is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, about east of Manhattan....

 in 1982.

In 1993, Gelernter was critically injured opening a mailbomb
Mailbomb
A letter bomb, also called parcel bomb, mail bomb or post bomb, is an explosive device sent via the postal service, and designed with the intention to injure or kill the recipient when opened. They have been used in terrorist attacks such as those of the Unabomber...

 sent by Theodore Kaczynski
Theodore Kaczynski
Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski , also known as the "Unabomber" , is an American mathematician, social critic, anarcho-primitivist, and Neo-Luddite who engaged in a mail bombing campaign that spanned nearly 20 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others.Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois,...

, who at that time was an unidentified but violent opponent of technology, dubbed by the press as "the Unabomber". He recovered from his injuries but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged. He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber. Shortly afterwards he became a practicing Jew; previously he had been secular.

He helped found the company Mirror Worlds
Mirror Worlds
Mirror Worlds Technologies, Inc. was a company based in New Haven, Connecticut, which created software using ideas from the book Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean by Yale professor David Gelernter, who helped found the...

 Technologies, which in 2001 released Scopeware software using ideas from his book, Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean (1992). Gelernter believed that computers can free users from being filing clerks by organizing their data. The company announced it would "cease operations effective May 15, 2004". A related company Mirror Worlds
Mirror Worlds
Mirror Worlds Technologies, Inc. was a company based in New Haven, Connecticut, which created software using ideas from the book Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean by Yale professor David Gelernter, who helped found the...

, LLC recently had their patent infringement verdict against Apple, Inc. overturned in the Eastern District of Texas.

In 2003, he was nominated to and became a member of the National Council on the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

. In 2006, Gelernter joined the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.

Gelernter contributes to magazines such as City Journal, The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...

, and Commentary which are generally considered neoconservative. For seven months, he contributed a weekly op-ed column to the LA Times.

Books

  • Judaism: A Way of Being. Yale University Press, 2009.
  • Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. Hardcover ed. Doubleday., 2007.
  • Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology. Paperback ed. Perseus Pub., 1998.
  • The Aesthetics of Computing. Paperback ed. Phoenix (Orion Books Ltd, UK), 1998.
  • Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber. Hardcover ed. Simon & Schuster Adult Pub. Group, 1997.
  • 1939: the Lost World of the Fair. Paperback ed. HarperCollins Pub., 1996.
  • The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought. Hardcover ed. MacMillan, Inc., 1994.
  • Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean. 1st ed. Oxford Univ. Pr., 1992.
  • With Nicholas Carriero. How to Write Parallel Programs: A first course. Hardcover ed. Mass. Instit. of Tech. Pr., 1990.
  • With David Padua and Alexandru Nicolau. Language and Compilers for Parallel Computing. Hardcover ed. Mass. Instit. of Tech. Pr., 1990.
  • With Suresh Jagannathan. Programming Linguistics. Hardcover ed. Mass. Instit. of Tech., 1990.

Political articles


External links

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