Richard Wexelblat
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Richard L. Wexelblat, aka Dick Wexelblat is an American an artisanal woodturner and former computer scientist.
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Early life[edit]
Wexelblat received his BSEE, MSEE (CS), and Ph.D. (CS) from The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 6/1959, 6/1961, and 12/1965 respectively. His doctorate is believed by many and so reported by ACM to have been the first ever awarded by a formally recognized Computer Science department.[1][2] (Note: not the first CS doctorate, but the first awarded by a CS department. Andy van Dam should share this distinction as he completed his CS dissertation at essentially the same time.
He left the computer field to become an artisanal woodturner.
Career[edit]
He is said to be the originator of Wexelblat's scheduling algorithm:[citation needed] "Choose two of: good, fast, cheap. He stated, "Bob Rosin said I originated this; I'm not sure. He also credited me with having been the first to refer to Occam's Razor as 'The Law of Least Astonishment'".
Personal life[edit]
His sons, Alan and David, and his brother Paul are also computer scientists, although Paul is now mostly retired and David is about halfway through law school.
Selected publications[edit]
- Richard L. Wexelblat (ed.): History of Programming Languages, Academic Press 1981. ISBN 978-0-12-745040-7
References[edit]
- ^ Edwin D. Reilly (2003). Milestones in computer science and information technology. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-57356-521-9.
- ^ "Computer Pioneers - Saul Gorn". history.computer.org.
External links[edit]
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