Steven Stanley Muchnick is a noted 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...

 researcher, best known as author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 of the 1997 treatise on compiler

Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

s, "Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation."

Background

In 1974, Muchnick was awarded a Ph.D

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...

 in computer science from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. After graduation, he became a professor at the University of Kansas

University of Kansas

The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

, located in Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...

. During his tenure at that institution, he wrote several research papers, many of which were published in the Journal of the ACM

Journal of the ACM

The Journal of the ACM is the flagship scientific journal of the Association for Computing Machinery . It is peer-reviewed and covers computer science in general, especially theoretical aspects. Its current editor-in-chief is Victor Vianu, from University of California, San Diego.The journal has...

.

Muchnick eventually departed from his teaching profession. He then went on to apply his knowledge of compilers as a vital member of the teams that developed two computer architecture

Computer architecture

In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....

s — PA-RISC

PA-RISC

PA-RISC is an instruction set architecture developed by Hewlett-Packard. As the name implies, it is a reduced instruction set computer architecture, where the PA stands for Precision Architecture...

 at Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

 and SPARC

SPARC

SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....

 at Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

.

Upon completion of the initial work on each architecture, he served as the leader of the advanced compiler design and implementation groups for these systems.

Later Muchnik became involved in the prevention of HIV infections. In 2010 he was a member of the San Francisco HIV Prevention Planning Center .