Charles Antony Richard (Tony) Hoare

Born January 11, 1934, major contributor to the understanding of the logic of programs, developer of the Axiomatic Approach to program description, and recipient of the 1980 ACM Turing Award.

Education: scholar and senior scholar, the King's School, Canterbury, 1948-1952; exhibitioner, Merton College, Oxford, 1952-1956; first-class honors, moderations, second-class honors, Lit. Hum., Oxford University, 1956; civil service interpreter's qualification, Russian; certificate in statistics (with distinction), 1958-1959.

Professional Experience: National Service, Royal Navy, 1956-1958; British Council Visiting Student, Moscow State, 1959-1960; Elliott Bros. (London) Ltd.: programmer, senior programmer, chief engineer, technical manager, chief scientist, 1960-1968, project leader in the implementation of Algol 60, 1960-1962, chief engineer, responsible for design and implementation of all general-purpose hardware and software products, 1963-1966; chief scientist, Computing Research Laboratory, 1966-1968; chief consultant, National Computing Centre, 1968; Queen's University of Belfast: professor of computing science, 1968-1977, director of the University Computer Laboratory, 1968-1970; visiting professor, Stanford University, 1973; SERC senior fellow, 1976-1977; Oxford University: professor of computation, fellow of Wolfson College, 1977-present, director of the University Computing Laboratory, 1984-1986, 1991-present; Admiral R. Inman Centennial Chair in Computing Theory, University of Texas, Austin, 1986-1987.

Honors and Awards: distinguished fellow of British Computer Society, 1978; DSc (Hon.), University of Southern Carolina, 1979; ACM Turing Award, 1980; AFIP Harry Goode Memorial Award, 1981; elected fellow of the Royal Society, 1982; IEE Faraday Medal, 1985; DSc (Hon.), Warwick University, 1985; honorary doctor of science, University of Pennsylvania, 1986; DSc (Hon.), Queen's University of Belfast, 1987; foreign member, Accademia dei Lincei, 1988; honorary doctor of the University of York, 1989; member, Academia Europaea, 1989; IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award, 1990; honorary doctor of the University of Essex, 1991; IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award, 1991; Lee Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitor, Singapore, 1992.

QUOTATIONS

"In the interest of increased quality of software products, we may be well advised to get rid of many facilities of modern, baroque programming languages that are widely advertised in the name of "user orientation," "scientific sophistication," and "progress." (Hoare 1975)

"I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Significant Publications

Hoare, C. A. R., E. W. Dijkstra, and O-J. Dahl, Structured Programming, Academic Press, New York, 1972.

Hoare, C. A. R., and N. Wirth, "An Axiomatic Definition of the Programming Language Pascal," ACTA Informatica, Vol. 2, 1973, pp. 335-355.

Hoare, C. A. R., "An Assessment of the Programming Language Pascal," IEEE Trans. Software Eng, June 1975.

Hoare, C. A. R., "The Emperor's Old Clothes," Comm. ACM., Vol. 24, No. 2, Feb. 1981, pp. 75-83.

Hoare, C. A. R., Communicating Sequential Processes, Prentice-Hall International, New York, 1985.

Hoare, C. A. R., and C. B. Jones, eds., Essays in Computing Science, Prentice-Hall International, New York, 1989.

UPDATES

Photo changed (MRW, 2013)