David Harel
Encyclopedia
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
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 the Weizmann Institute of Science
Weizmann Institute of Science
The Weizmann Institute of Science , known as Machon Weizmann, is a university and research institute in Rehovot, Israel. It differs from other Israeli universities in that it offers only graduate and post-graduate studies in the sciences....
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the institute for seven years.
Biography
Harel is best known for his work on dynamic logicDynamic logic (modal logic)
Dynamic logic is an extension of modal logic originally intended for reasoning about computer programs and later applied to more general complex behaviors arising in linguistics, philosophy, AI, and other fields.-Language:...
, computability and software engineering
Software engineering
Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...
. In the 1980s he invented the graphical language of Statecharts, which has been adopted as part of the UML
Unified Modeling Language
Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
standard. He has also published expository accounts of computer science, such as his award winning 1987 book "Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing" and has made appearances on Israeli radio and television. He currently works on many diverse topics, including visual language
Visual language
A visual language is a system of communication using visual elements. Speech as a means of communication cannot strictly be separated from the whole of human communicative activity which includes the visual and the term 'language' in relation to vision is an extension of its use to describe the...
s, graph layout, systems biology
Systems biology
Systems biology is a term used to describe a number of trends in bioscience research, and a movement which draws on those trends. Proponents describe systems biology as a biology-based inter-disciplinary study field that focuses on complex interactions in biological systems, claiming that it uses...
and the communication of odours.
Harel completed his Ph.D. at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
between 1976 and 1978, which is exceptionally fast.
In 1987, Harel co-founded software company I-Logix
I-Logix
I-Logix was a leading provider of Collaborative Model driven development solutions for systems design through software development focused on real-time embedded applications. Founded in 1987, the Andover, Massachusetts-based company product line enhanced collaboration among engineers, graphically...
.
He is now working on a computer model of a nematode, 'Caenorhabditis elegans
Caenorhabditis elegans
Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living, transparent nematode , about 1 mm in length, which lives in temperate soil environments. Research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans was begun in 1974 by Sydney Brenner and it has since been used extensively as a model...
', which was the first multicellular organism to have its genome completely sequenced. The eventual completeness of such a model depends on his updated version of the test developed by Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
to identify whether computers could reason well enough that a human communicating with them could not tell whether a human or a machine was at the other end of the communication.
He is a fellow 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...
and the IEEE.
Awards
- 1986 Stevens AwardStevens AwardThe Stevens Award is a software engineering award given in memory of Wayne Stevens. The international Stevens Award was created to recognize outstanding contributions to the literature or practice of methods for software and systems development...
for Software Development Methods - 1992 ACM Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
- 2004 Israel PrizeIsrael PrizeThe Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
, for computer science - 2006 ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award
- 2007 ACM Software System AwardACM Software System AwardThe Software System Award is honoring people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both"...
External links
- David Harel's home page at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
See also
- List of Israel Prize recipients