Given by ACM SIGPLAN to recognize an individual or individuals who has made a significant and lasting contribution to
the field of programming languages. The contribution can be a single event or a life-time of achievement.
The award includes a prize of $5,000. The award is presented at SIGPLAN's
PLDI conference the following June.
Recipients
2011: Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare, FRS, FREng, FBCS
Citation
"Tony Hoare's long career in computing is studded with seminal engineering and scientific contributions to Programming Languages; his views on programming language design have been recognized as profound even by those who declined to follow his advice.
Two contributions stand out as fundamental: the development of what is now known as Hoare logic, and Communicating Sequential Processes. Hoare logic is a system for reasoning about imperative programs. It was introduced in the 1969 article "An Axiomatic Basic for Computer Programming", which is perhaps the most influential 6-page paper ever published in CACM. Drawing on earlier work of Robert Floyd, an entire sub-area of computer science has developed from Hoare's initial ideas; many modern verification systems build on Hoare logic.
Only 9 years later, CACM published Hoare's paper on Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP). Contemporary with Milner's CCS, but pursuing complementary goals, CSP has been enormously influential. It provided the basis for the occam programming language and its realization in the Transputer; it has been used for modeling and verifying the concurrency properties of critical software systems; and it inspired a flowering of subsequent concurrency research.
Although either of these contributions would alone justify the achievement award, Hoare is doing more with his Unifying Theories research, which aims to unify theories of programming across paradigm, abstraction level and semantic style. Beyond all of this, Tony is renowned for his unfailing courtesy, his inspiration, and his dedication to his chosen calling. He is the epitome of a scholar and a gentleman."
2010: Gordon D. Plotkin
Citation
"Professor Gordon D. Plotkin has made fundamental advances in almost every area of the theory of programming languages. His contributions have helped to establish the mathematical foundations on which the scientific study of programming languages are based. His 1975 paper "Call-by-name, Call-by-value, and the λ-calculus" exposed the relationship between the reduction semantics of the λ-calculus and its operational semantics, as defined by Landin's SECD machine. In the process, he defined what it meant for a calculus and a semantics to correspond: this launched the study of operational semantics as it is now understood. He invented Structural Operational Semantics as a technique for specifying the semantics of a wide range of programming languages, concurrent as well as sequential; this form of semantics is now one of the basic working tools of researchers developing new programming languages and type systems.
Plotkin's contributions to the development of the mathematical theory of domains, and its applications to the denotational semantics of programming languages, have been of fundamental importance: they include his powerdomain construction, systematic development of the general theory of the solution of recursive domain equations, and his work on PCF and the full abstraction problem.
Plotkin's work with Glynn Winskel on event structures is the basis for reasoning about distributed systems, process algebras, and reactive systems. Event structures have been enormously influential in the development of models of concurrency. He has also investigated the logical foundations of computer security, including logics for specifying authorization policies for computer systems. Plotkin continues to make bold and deep contributions, for example, in his current work on the algebraic theory of effects, and on languages and calculi for biochemical modelling. Taken together, Gordon Plotkin's contributions over the past four decades exhibit a range and depth unmatched in the field."
2009: Rod Burstall
Citation
"Professor Rod Burstall has made deep, seminal contributions to the design of programming languages and the field of program verification. These contributions, which many of us now take for granted, include the introduction of algebraic datatypes coupled with pattern-matching clausal function definitions as found in Hope, ML, Haskell and Coq; the generalization and use of structural induction for proving properties of programs; the fold-unfold method for deriving efficient, provably-correct programs from easy to understand prototypes; mechanisms for reasoning about pointer-based, imperative programs that directly led to the development of separation logic; proof techniques and connections to modal logic for reasoning about concurrent programs; and the use of dependent types and algebraic specifications for constructing module systems that directly influenced SML and OCaml. Through these amazing contributions and his collaborations and mentorship, he helped build one of the most important centers of programming research at Edinburgh, which was eventually institutionalized as the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science."
2008:
Barbara Liskov
Citation
"Professor Barbara
Liskov has had tremendous impact on the fields of programming languages,
operating systems, distributed systems, and information security. Much of
her early research focus was on data abstraction, modularity, and
encapsulation as typified by the CLU programming language. At the time, CLU
incorporated a number of advanced features, such as modular encapsulation of
abstract data types, bounded polymorphism, exceptions, and iterator
abstraction that had clear influence over successive languages including Ada,
Modula-3, C++, and Java. Through CLU, the related books and articles, her
work on behavioral subtyping, and her courses on programming methodology,
Professor Liskov changed the way that a generation of engineers thought
about and constructed large software systems. Professor Liskov's work on the
Argus project also brought to the fore the idea of integrating transactions
and orthogonal persistence into a programming language with an aim towards
building reliable distributed systems. More recently, her work on
information flow control helped to start a research focus on end-to-end
security using language-based mechanisms for enforcement."
2007: Niklaus Wirth
2006: Ron Cytron, Jeanne Ferrante, Barry Rosen, Mark Wegman, and Kenneth
Zadeck
2005: Erich Gamma, Richard Helm,
Ralph Johnson,
John Vlissides
2004: John Backus
2003: John
Reynolds
2002: John McCarthy
2001: Robin Milner
2000: Susan Graham
1999: Ken Kennedy
1998: Fran Allen
1997: Guy Steele
