McDowell Award
Encyclopedia
The W. Wallace McDowell Award is awarded by the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding recent theoretical, design, educational, practical, or other similar innovative contributions that fall within the scope of Computer Society interest. This is the highest technical award made solely by the IEEE Computer Society
where selection of the awardee is based on the "highest level of technical accomplishment and achievement". The IEEE Computer Society
(with over 85000 members from every field of computing) is “dedicated to advancing the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing technology.” Another award which is considered to be the "most prestigious technical award in computing" is the A. M. Turing Award awarded by Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM), and is popularly referred to as the "computer science’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize". The W. Wallace McDowell Award is sometimes popularly referred to as the "IT Nobel".
The award is named after W. Wallace McDowell who was director of engineering at IBM
, during the development of the landmark product IBM 701
. Mr. McDowell was responsible for the transition from electromechanical techniques to electronics, and the subsequent transition to solid state devices.
The first recipient, in 1966, was Fernando J. Corbato
who is a prominent American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems., then of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. The second recipient, in 1987, was John Backus
who was awarded the Mcdowell Award for the development of FORTRAN
and the syntactical forms incorporated in ALGOL
. John Backus was the developer of FORTRAN
, for years one of the best known and most used programming systems in the world.
The award recipients and the fields in which they earned the recognition are listed below. Refer to the individual recipients for more detailed information on their achievements.
IEEE Computer Society
The IEEE Computer Society is a professional society of IEEE. Its purpose and scope is “to advance the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing science and technology” and the “professional standing of its members.” The CS is the largest of 38 technical societies...
where selection of the awardee is based on the "highest level of technical accomplishment and achievement". The IEEE Computer Society
IEEE Computer Society
The IEEE Computer Society is a professional society of IEEE. Its purpose and scope is “to advance the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing science and technology” and the “professional standing of its members.” The CS is the largest of 38 technical societies...
(with over 85000 members from every field of computing) is “dedicated to advancing the theory, practice, and application of computer and information processing technology.” Another award which is considered to be the "most prestigious technical award in computing" is the A. M. Turing Award awarded by Association for Computing Machinery
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...
(ACM), and is popularly referred to as the "computer science’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize". The W. Wallace McDowell Award is sometimes popularly referred to as the "IT Nobel".
The award is named after W. Wallace McDowell who was director of engineering 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...
, during the development of the landmark product IBM 701
IBM 701
The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer...
. Mr. McDowell was responsible for the transition from electromechanical techniques to electronics, and the subsequent transition to solid state devices.
The first recipient, in 1966, was Fernando J. Corbato
Fernando J. Corbató
Fernando José "Corby" Corbató is a prominent American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems....
who is a prominent American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems., then of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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...
. The second recipient, in 1987, was John Backus
John Backus
John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language and was the inventor of the Backus-Naur form , the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax.He also did research in...
who was awarded the Mcdowell Award for the development of FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
and the syntactical forms incorporated in ALGOL
ALGOL
ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years...
. John Backus was the developer of FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
, for years one of the best known and most used programming systems in the world.
The award recipients and the fields in which they earned the recognition are listed below. Refer to the individual recipients for more detailed information on their achievements.
W. Wallace McDowell Award recipients
| Year | Recipients | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| 1966 | Fernando J. Corbató Fernando J. Corbató Fernando José "Corby" Corbató is a prominent American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems.... |
For his pioneering work in organizing and spearheading the early development of the first practical large-scale time-sharing computer system, and for his tireless efforts in providing direction for the entire time-sharing concept. |
| 1967 | John W. Backus | For his early and continuing contribution to the field of higher-level languages, in particular for is conception and leadership resulting in the completion of the first FORTRAN projects; and for his work in syntactical forms incorporated in ALGOL. |
| 1968 | Seymour R. Cray | For his continuing technical contributions to computer development through design automation and system definition, and for outstanding managerial leadership in producing a series of large scale computers. |
| 1969 | Herman Lukoff Herman Lukoff Herman Lukoff was a computer pioneer and fellow of the IEEE.Lukoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Aaron and Anna Lukoff. He graduated from the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. While at the Moore School, he helped develop the ENIAC and... |
For his insight and leadership in solving primary problems of early computers and his continuing contributions that have paved the way for tomorrows computing systems. |
| 1970 | Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. | For his significant contributions to computer architecture and programming and his leadership in cooperative efforts to further education in the computer field. |
| 1971 | Tom Kilburn Tom Kilburn Tom Kilburn CBE, FRS was an English engineer. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams Tube and the world's first stored-program computer, the Small-Scale Experimental Machine , while working at the University of Manchester.-Computer engineering:Kilburn was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire and... |
For his achievement in designing and building some of the first-- as well as some of the most powerful -- computers in the world. |
| 1972 | Jean A. Hoerni | For significantly influencing the architecture and design of data processing systems by inventing the planar process Planar process The planar process is a manufacturing process used in the semiconductor industry to build individual components of a transistor, and in turn, connect those transistors together. It is the primary process by which modern integrated circuits are built... of semi-conductor circuit fabrication -- the development that made possible the economical mass production of reliable integrated circuits and semi-conductor memories. |
| 1973 | David A. Huffman David A. Huffman David Albert Huffman was a pioneer in computer science. He is well-known for his Huffman coding. David Huffman died at the age of 74 after a 10-month battle with cancer.-Education:... |
For his contributions to the solution of sequential circuit problems and coding theory, and for his leadership as a teacher. |
| 1974 | Shmuel Winograd Shmuel Winograd Shmuel Winograd is an American computer scientist, noted for his contributions to computational complexity. He has proved several major results regarding the computational aspects of arithmetic; his contributions include the Coppersmith-Winograd algorithm and an algorithm for Fast Fourier... |
For his pioneering work in computational complexity and for stimulating further research on the scientific basis for evaluating the efficiency of computational algorithms. |
| 1975 | C. Gordon Bell | For outstanding contributions in the areas of technical design, education, and publications influential in developing the computer field. |
| 1976 | Gene M. Amdahl | For his contributions to the architecture and design of computer systems, and for his achievements in promoting advancements in the computer state of the art through business enterprise. |
| 1977 | Robert S. Barton | For his innovative architectural computer concepts, such as stack processing, data stored with self-describing tags, and the direct execution of higher level languages, as embodied in the B-5000 and successor machines. |
| 1978 | Gordon E. Moore | For outstanding contributions to research and development of semi-conductor components and his insights and leadership in the micro-processor and semi conductor memory fields. |
| 1979 | Grace Murray Hopper | For her combination of technical skill, leadership, teaching capability, and single-minded drive for the invention, adoption, and standardization of high-level programming languages. |
| 1980 | Donald E. Knuth | For his many contributions to software engineering and education and for the excellence of his scholarship and creativity in organizing vast subject areas of computer science so that they are accessible to all segments of the computing community. |
| 1981 | Maurice V. Wilkes | For a lifetime of innovative technical contributions to the computer field in the areas of software engineering, structured programming, distributed computing, data base structures, time-sharing, storage hierarchies, paging, and microprogramming. |
| 1982 | Rex Rice | For his outstanding technical and managerial contributions to computer development through the invention of the universally utilized dual-in-line semi-conductor component package, and the design and production of the first large LSI semi-conductor memory systems. |
| 1983 | Daniel L. Slotnick | For his pioneering contributions to centrally controlled parallel computers and for his achievement in creating the parallel computer ILLIAC IV. |
| 1984 | Thomas M. McWilliams and Lawrence C. Widdoes, Jr. |
For creating the structured computer-aided logic (SCALD) design methodology, which is the basis for many of the successful computer-aided engineering systems used in the industry.]] |
| 1985 | William D. Strecker | For being principal designer of the VAX architecture and for contributions to local area networks, high-performance interconnects, caches, and memory hierarchies. |
| 1987 | Sidney Fernbach | For continuously challenging, inspiring, and supporting American designers and industry to produce many successive generations of super computers. |
| 1988 | William Poduska William Poduska Dr. John William Poduska, Sr was a founder of Prime Computer, Apollo Computer, and Stellar Computer. Prior to that he headed the Electronics Research Lab at NASA's Cambridge, Massachusetts facility and also worked at Honeywell.... |
For his continued creative contributions to hardware and software developments and for management expertise in bringing them to products. |
| 1989 | Edward B. Eichelberger and Thomas W. Williams |
For developing the level-sensitive scan technique of testing solid-state logic circuits and for leading, defining, and promoting design for test Design For Test Design for Test is a name for design techniques that add certain testability features to a microelectronic hardware product design. The premise of the added features is that they make it easier to develop and apply manufacturing tests for the designed hardware... ability concepts." |
| 1990 | Lawrence J. Roberts | For designing packet switching technology and bringing it into practical use by means of the ARPA network. |
| 1994 | Federico Faggin Federico Faggin Federico Faggin , who received in 2010 the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by Barack Obama, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors, at the White House in Washington, is an Italian-born and naturalized U.S... |
For the development of the Silicon Gate Process, and the first commercial microprocessor. |
| 1995 | Kenneth W. Kennedy | For important contributions to theory and practice of compiler optimization and leadership in the development of software for parallel computation. |
| 1996 | Timothy Berners-Lee | For innovative invention of the World Wide Web, which extends hypertext to distributed information, which has brought about a revolutionary transformation in the use of computers and networks. |
| 1997 | Marc Andreesen Eric Bina | For Developing a Multi-Platform Browsing Tool for the World Wide Web. |
| 1998 | Tilak Agerwala | For outstanding contributions to the development of high performance computers. |
| 1999 | Yale Patt Yale Patt Yale Nance Patt is an American professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Engineering. In 1965, Patt introduced the WOS module, the first complex logic gate implemented on a single piece of silicon... |
For your impact on the high performance microprocessor industry via a combination of important contributions to both engineering and education. |
| 2000 | Raymond Ozzie | For his vision, determination, and programming skill in the development of Lotus Notes, a program that enables groups of people to work collaboratively over computer networks. |
| 2001 | Pradeep K. Khosla | For significant contributions to the design of re-configurable real-time software systems, and for significant contributions to undergraduate and graduate education in electrical and computer engineering and robotics. |
| 2002 | Jaishankar M. Menon | For leading contributions on the architecture and design of data storage systems and RAID technology. |
| 2003 | Sartaj K. Sahni | For contributions to the theory of NP-hard and NP-complete problems. |
| 2004 | Simon Lam | For outstanding fundamental contributions in network protocols and security services. |
| 2005 | Krishan K. Sabnani Krishan Sabnani Krishan Sabnani is an Indian-American engineer and Senior Vice President of the Networking Research Laboratory at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in New Jersey. He manages several research teams based in the US, UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, and India... |
For seminal contributions to networking protocols and to wireless data networks. |
| 2006 | Benjamin W. Wah | For fundamental contributions to the theory and applications of nonlinear and resource-constrained optimization. |
| 2007 | Anil K. Jain | For pioneering contributions to theory, technique, and practice of pattern recognition, computer vision, and biometric recognition systems. |
| 2008 | Krishna Palem Krishna Palem Krishna V. Palem is an American computer scientist and engineer of Indian origin and is the Kenneth and Audrey Kennedy Professor of Computing at Rice University and the director of Institute for Sustainable Nanoelectronics at Nanyang Technological University... |
For pioneering contributions to the algorithmic, compilation, and architectural foundations of embedded computing. |
| 2009 | Jiawei Han Jiawei Han Jiawei Han, born in Shanghai, China on 11 August 1949, is a renowned computer scientist who specializes in research on Data Mining. He is an ACM fellow and an IEEE fellow. He was the 2009 winner of the McDowell Award, the highest technical award made by IEEE.... |
For significant contributions to knowledge discovery and data mining. |
| 2011 | Ian F. Akyildiz Ian F. Akyildiz Ian F. Akyildiz is the Ken Byers Chair Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology , the Director of the and Chair of the Telecommunications Group at the School of ECE at Georgia Tech.Since June 2008, Dr... |
For pioneering contributions to wireless sensor network architectures and communication protocols. |