Eugene McDonnell
Encyclopedia
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...
pioneer and long-time contributor to the programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s APL
APL programming language
APL is an interactive array-oriented language and integrated development environment, which is available from a number of commercial and noncommercial vendors and for most computer platforms. It is based on a mathematical notation developed by Kenneth E...
and J.
He was a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech or just Tech, and also administratively as High School 430, is a New York City public high school that specializes in engineering, math and science and is the largest specialized high school for science, technology, engineering, and...
. After serving as an infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
corporal in the U.S. Army in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he attended the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
, graduating in 1949 summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was awarded a First Year Graduate Fellowship to Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he studied comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
, particularly Dante’s
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
.
Studying the poems of Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, he noticed that the first two poems in Frost's book West Running Brook, "Spring Pools" and "The Freedom of the Moon", not only discuss reflecting, but the rhyme schemes of the two reflect each other: aabcbc and cbcbaa. When he met Frost, he was delighted to find that they had both committed the 193 lines of John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's "Lycidas
Lycidas
"Lycidas" is a poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as a pastoral elegy. It first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies, entitled Justa Edouardo King Naufrago, dedicated to the memory of Edward King, a collegemate of Milton's at Cambridge who drowned when his ship sank in the Irish Sea off the...
" to memory.
His first work at IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
was in the design of IBM’s first Time-Sharing system, which became a very early host to IVSYS, a predecessor of APL. In 1968 he became a colleague of Ken Iverson
Kenneth E. Iverson
Kenneth Eugene Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the APL programming language in 1962. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory...
, used Iverson notation before APL was named, and was active in the very earliest days of APL. He holds (3 September 1968) "Information Transfer Control System" allowing communication between two users. In 1978 he left IBM and joined I. P. Sharp Associates
I. P. Sharp Associates
I. P. Sharp Associates, IPSA for short, was a major Canadian computer time sharing, consulting and services firm of the 1970s and 80s. IPSA is particularly well known for its work on the APL programming language, an early packet switching computer network known as IPSANET, and a powerful...
. He retired from I.P. Sharp in 1990.
At IBM, McDonnell devised the notation for the signum
Sign function
In mathematics, the sign function is an odd mathematical function that extracts the sign of a real number. To avoid confusion with the sine function, this function is often called the signum function ....
and circle
Trigonometric function
In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle. They are used to relate the angles of a triangle to the lengths of the sides of a triangle...
functions in APL, designed the complex floor function
Floor function
In mathematics and computer science, the floor and ceiling functions map a real number to the largest previous or the smallest following integer, respectively...
, and proposed the extension of or
Logical disjunction
In logic and mathematics, a two-place logical connective or, is a logical disjunction, also known as inclusive disjunction or alternation, that results in true whenever one or more of its operands are true. E.g. in this context, "A or B" is true if A is true, or if B is true, or if both A and B are...
and and
Logical conjunction
In logic and mathematics, a two-place logical operator and, also known as logical conjunction, results in true if both of its operands are true, otherwise the value of false....
to GCD
Greatest common divisor
In mathematics, the greatest common divisor , also known as the greatest common factor , or highest common factor , of two or more non-zero integers, is the largest positive integer that divides the numbers without a remainder.For example, the GCD of 8 and 12 is 4.This notion can be extended to...
and LCM
Least common multiple
In arithmetic and number theory, the least common multiple of two integers a and b, usually denoted by LCM, is the smallest positive integer that is a multiple of both a and b...
. With Iverson he was responsible for the inclusion of hooks and forks
Combinatory logic
Combinatory logic is a notation introduced by Moses Schönfinkel and Haskell Curry to eliminate the need for variables in mathematical logic. It has more recently been used in computer science as a theoretical model of computation and also as a basis for the design of functional programming...
in J. The result of zero divided by zero in J is as he proposed in 1976. He won the Iverson Award
Iverson Award
The Iverson Award, more formally the Kenneth E. Iverson Award for Outstanding Contribution to APL, is presented by the Special Interest Group on APL of the Association for Computing Machinery . It is presented to a person who has made significant contributions to the APL programming language or to...
in 1987.
McDonnell was the publisher of the APL Press, producing "A Source Book in APL" and "APL Quote Quad, the Early Years". He was the editor and principal contributor of the Recreational APL column in APL Quote-Quad for many years. He wrote dozens of the "At Play with J" columns in Vector, the journal of the British APL Association. He contributed to Sloane's
Neil Sloane
Neil James Alexander Sloane is a British-U.S. mathematician. His major contributions are in the fields of combinatorics, error-correcting codes, and sphere packing...
On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences , also cited simply as Sloane's, is an online database of integer sequences, created and maintained by N. J. A. Sloane, a researcher at AT&T Labs...
.
He had Erdős number
Erdos number
The Erdős number describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and mathematician Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers.The same principle has been proposed for other eminent persons in other fields.- Overview :...
2:
- Paul ErdősPaul ErdosPaul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory...
and Jeffrey ShallitJeffrey ShallitJeffrey Outlaw Shallit is a computer scientist, number theorist, a noted advocate for civil liberties on the Internet, and a noted critic of intelligent design. He is married to Anna Lubiw, also a computer scientist....
, New bounds on the length of finite Pierce and Engel series, Séminaire de Théorie des Nombres de Bordeaux 3, 1991, pp. 43–53. - Eugene McDonnell and Jeffrey Shallit, Extending APL to Infinity, Proc. APL 80 International Conf., North-Holland, 1980, pp. 123–132.
He was a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), and gave a talk "Classical Persuasion" at the JASNA meeting at Lake Louise in 1993. He was active in the Bay area Jane Austen group, and wrote a topical index to the Dierdre Le Faye edition of Jane Austen's letters, which can be seen at the Pemberly site, http://www.pemberley.com/.
McDonnell died peacefully at his home in Palo Alto on August 17, 2010.
Conference Papers
- IBM69 Boston, A Formal Description of JCL
- APL73 Toronto, The Variety of Alternative Definitions of a Simple Function
- APL73 Copenhagen, Complex Floor
- APL74 Anaheim, The Caret Functions
- APL75 Pisa, A Notation for the GCD and LCM Functions
- APL76 Ottawa, Zero Divided By Zero
- IBM78 Los Altos, organizer
- APL79 Rochester, NY, Fuzzy Residue
- APL80 Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands, Extending APL to Infinity, with Jeffrey ShallitJeffrey ShallitJeffrey Outlaw Shallit is a computer scientist, number theorist, a noted advocate for civil liberties on the Internet, and a noted critic of intelligent design. He is married to Anna Lubiw, also a computer scientist....
- IPSA80 Toronto, Commercial Applications for Event Handling
- APL81 San Francisco, conference chairman
- APL84 Helsinki, APL award
- APL86 Manchester, UK, A Perfect Square Root Routine
- APL87 Dallas, Iverson AwardIverson AwardThe Iverson Award, more formally the Kenneth E. Iverson Award for Outstanding Contribution to APL, is presented by the Special Interest Group on APL of the Association for Computing Machinery . It is presented to a person who has made significant contributions to the APL programming language or to...
- APL88 Sydney, Life: Nasty, Brutish, and Short
- APL89 NYC, Phrasal Forms, with Kenneth E. IversonKenneth E. IversonKenneth Eugene Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the APL programming language in 1962. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory...
(introduces hooks and forks) - APL90 Copenhagen, APL\?, with Roger HuiRoger HuiRoger Hui is a computer scientist and co-developer of the J Programming Language.He was born in Hong Kong and he immigrated to Canada with his entire family in 1966.-Education and career:In 1973, Hui entered the University of Alberta...
, Kenneth E. IversonKenneth E. IversonKenneth Eugene Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the APL programming language in 1962. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory...
, and Arthur Whitney (introduces J) - APL91 Stanford, conference organizer
- APL93 Toronto, From Trees Into Boxes, with David Steinbrook
Anecdotes
- He survived army basic trainingBasic TrainingBasic Training may refer to:* Basic Training, a 1971 American documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman* Basic Training , an American sex comedy* Recruit training...
with the help of a 2nd lieutenant, who advised him, "Soldier, kindly point your rifle away from your stomach", when the officer found him attempting to unjam a loaded rifle with his foot. - His recounting of the development of the circle function is entitled "The Story of ○".
- As of 17 December 1998, he had received 12 Knuth reward checkKnuth reward checkKnuth reward checks are awarded by computer scientist Donald Knuth for finding mistakes in, or making suggestions for, his publications. In the preface of each of his books and on his website, Knuth offers a reward of $2.56 to the first person to find each error in his published books, whether it...
s totalling $70.07. - He lived a short walk from k inventor Arthur Whitney and wrote one of the early k manuals. He was also a neighbor of John L. HennessyJohn L. HennessyJohn LeRoy Hennessy is an American computer scientist and academician. Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems Inc. and is the 10th President of Stanford University.-Background:...
for a number of years. Hennesey is now the president of Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityThe 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...
.
External links
- Papers and Articles
- "At Play With J" columns
- "At Play With J (Edn 2)" paperback
- Remembering Ken Iverson