Top 5 Computer Scientists in my Most Read

Anders Hejlsberg	Turbo Pascal, C#
Grace Murray Hopper	LibLinkLoader, FlowMatic
Chuck Peddle	M 6502, PET, Sirius Victor
Lorinda Cherry	eqn, bc
Lynn Conway	MPC, free VLSI

Alexandr W. Butrimenko and Ulrike Sichra

Did you know that IIASA (The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) in Laxenburg near Vienna hat a network research group in the early seventies? While surfing history buff pages and looking at Computernetze I found these interesting titles:

Alexandr Butrimenko, Ulrike Sichra: Priorities and Pay Function Routing for a Packet Switching Network. Rechnernetze und Datenfernverarbeitung 1976: 275-289

Alexandr Butrimenko, Ulrike Sichra: Virtual Circuits Versus Datagram - Usage of Communication Resources. Performance 1979: 525-537

Alexandr W. Butrimenko: Dezentralisierte Steuerung von Informationsverteilungsvorgängen in großen Systemen. Elektronische Informationsverarbeitung und Kybernetik 4(3): 187-195 (1968)

It's a pity these papers are not easily avaible. What can be found though, is work in the field where Mrs. Wood-Sichra comes from, e.g. this this contribution to SCRIP (Strategic Criteria for Rural Investments in Productivity).

Sophie Wilson, ARM ArchArchitect

This is Sophie (R.) Wilson, a logic, software and ISA designer and erstwhile BBC-Micro and Acorn Archimedes heroine.

While looking back into ARM history the only surviving, thriving and competitive European processor architecture I got back to her, all of her deeds and feeds.

At least now she's got a little more than a stub in Wikipedia. Among other things she codesigned the first Acorn micro, wrote the BBC Basic, co-wrote the BBC Micro OS and did the ARM ISA (instruction set architecture), most of it in cooperation with colleague Steve Furber. From ARM came StrongArm and a host of processors, one of which is in every iPod and PSP f.e.. No small feat.

Read an interview at this Acorn 6502 kit site.

This Lady is in many ways in a league of her own and a follower in the footsteps of Lynn Conway. In terms of taking up challenges and following the opportunities of silicon and life. She also reminds me of Frances Holberton in terms of logical language design.

One paper on ARM history I found has it like this: Furber designed the architecture and Wilson the instruction set – the list of machine-code commands that the processor would understand. While Intel used mainframes to debug their CPU’s innards, Furber claims that Wilson did it all in her head. In creating a piece of technical wizardry with no resources that worked first time when plugged in, the two were in some ways merely repeating what they’d done with the BBC Micro.

Here is one more file armstory (text/rtf, 22 KB) (from the caches of google where they place the results of robbing limited access websites), 'f course we will not know where from and how long this URL will work, probably not too.

Ms. Wilson works for Broadcom now and her homepage is at sophie.org.uk.

She's still in the trade of processor designing and seems to have delivered yet another seminal processor design, named Firepath.

Ms. Wilson shares my love and admiration for the 6502 and its assembly language. Made me feel smart and good.

Longtime coworker Steve Furber has written a book on the ARM architecture, if you prefer books over surfing.

The IMP Guys

The "IMP Guys": Bob Kahn, Dave Walden, Bernie Cosell (not in picture) Servero Ornstein, Truett Thach, Bill Bertell,Jim Geisman Ben Baker, Marty Thrope, Willy Crowther

I'm having a history fit again.

Severo Ornstein

Retired computer scientist, has got a bio stub on Wikipedia already. Has written a book "Computing in the Middle Ages: A View from the Trenches 1955-1983". Has been into IMP building, PARC and founding CPSR. Yahoo.at him, you'll find lots of interesting stuff. You will also find automatically find out about his father Leo Ornstein, the famous Russian composer.

His book is a definitve recommendation.