Edsger W. Dijkstra: The Man Behind the Prize

Abstract

It would be understatement to say that news of this year's Dijkstra award came to me as a surprise. In fact, it put me into a rather profound funk, occasioning unsought re ection on my arguably misspent adulthood. It has been some time since I have done signi cant scienti c research. So, I am quite humbled to be here. I did not really know Dijkstra, but I certainly knew of him. With Fred and David Gries on the faculty, his in uence on the Computer Science Department at Cornell was substantial when I was a graduate student. (I trust it still is.)