Bertrand Meyer
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language
Eiffel (programming language)
Eiffel is an ISO-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer and Eiffel Software. The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method...
.
Education and academic career
Bertrand Meyer received the equivalent of a bachelor's degreeBachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in engineering from the École polytechnique
École Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, a master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and a PhD
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 the Université de Nancy in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at Électricité de France
Électricité de France
Électricité de France S.A. is the second largest French utility company. Headquartered in Paris, France, with €65.2 billion in revenues in 2010, EDF operates a diverse portfolio of 120,000+ megawatts of generation capacity in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.EDF is one of...
, and for three years was on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
.
Since October 2001, he has been Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zürich
ETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he pursues research on building trusted components (reusable software elements) with a guaranteed level of quality.
His other activities include being adjunct professor at Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
(1998–2003) and membership of the French Academy of Technologies
French Academy of Technologies
The French Academy of Technologies is a learned society, founded in 2000, with an emphasis on technology. It is the newest of French academies...
. He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker. As former head of the ETH Computer Science department, he is one of the founders and the current president of Informatics Europe
Informatics Europe
Informatics Europe is an association of informatics departments in Europe founded in 2006. Its members are PhD-granting departments of informatics, computer science, computing etc. in universities as well as public and industrial research centers in information and software technology etc. in...
, the association of European computer science departments.
Computer languages
Meyer pursues the ideal of simple, elegant and user-friendly computer languages and is one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of object-oriented programmingObject-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
(OOP). His book Object-Oriented Software Construction
Object-Oriented Software Construction
Object-Oriented Software Construction is a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming. The first edition was published in 1988; the second, extensively revised and expanded edition , in 1997...
is widely considered to be the best work on presenting the case for OOP. Other books he has written include Eiffel: The Language (a description of the Eiffel language), Object Success (a discussion of object technology for managers), Reusable Software (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions), Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages and Touch of Class. He has authored numerous articles and edited conference proceedings.
He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution, and is the originator of the Design by Contract
Design by contract
Design by contract , also known as programming by contract and design-by-contract programming, is an approach to designing computer software...
development method.
His experiences with object technology through the Simula
Simula
Simula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard...
language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification
Formal specification
In computer science, a formal specification is a mathematical description of software or hardware that may be used to develop an implementation. It describes what the system should do, not how the system should do it...
(including the Z notation
Z notation
The Z notation , named after Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, is a formal specification language used for describing and modelling computing systems. It is targeted at the clear specification of computer programs and computer-based systems in general.-History:...
), provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel. Eiffel has been influential in the development of other languages including Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, C# and Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
.
In 2005, Meyer was the "senior award" winner of the first AITO Dahl-Nygaard award
Dahl-Nygaard Prize
The Dahl-Nygaard Prize is awarded annually to a senior researcher with outstanding career contributions and a younger researcher who has demonstrated great potential...
. This prize, named after the two creators of object technology, is awarded annually to a senior and a junior researchers who have made significant technical contributions to the field of Object Orientation.
In 2006, Meyer was recognized as honorary doctor of Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics
Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics
Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, abbreviated as SPbSU ITMO is a leading Russian technical university located in St. Petersburg, Russia. It trains specialists in cutting-edge technologies directed to science and technical...
.http://is.ifmo.ru/english/
On 9 June 2007, Meyer received the Software System Award of the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel. He is a 2008 Fellow of the ACM.
Wikipedia hoax
On 28 December 2005, an anonymous user falsely announced Meyer's death on German WikipediaGerman Wikipedia
The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and mostly publicly editable online encyclopedia.Founded in March 2001, it is the second-oldest and, with over articles, the second-largest edition of Wikipedia, behind the English Wikipedia...
's biography of Meyer. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker
Heinz Heise
Heinz Heise is a publishing house based in Germany.- History :Heise was created in Hanover in 1949 as an address and telephone directory publisher, then later expanded to include magazines and loose leaf collections. In 2001, the company was divided into separate enterprises, all of which came...
and the article was immediately corrected. Many major news media outlets in Germany and Switzerland picked up the story, creating the German Wikipedia's version of the Seigenthaler incident. Meyer went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, concluding "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."
See also
- Object-Oriented Software ConstructionObject-Oriented Software ConstructionObject-Oriented Software Construction is a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming. The first edition was published in 1988; the second, extensively revised and expanded edition , in 1997...
- Eiffel programming languageEiffel (programming language)Eiffel is an ISO-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer and Eiffel Software. The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method...
- Uniform access principleUniform access principleThe Uniform Access Principle was put forth by Bertrand Meyer. It states "All services offered by a module should be available through a uniform notation, which does not betray whether they are implemented through storage or through computation." This principle applies generally to object-oriented...