Re: [9fans] Sad News

[Bruce Ellis <bruce.ellis@gmail.com>]

The form was colloquially known as the "I Am Great" report.

brucee

On 14 October 2011 09:57, Thomas <twest9@verizon.net> wrote:
> I remember his giving a talk about 5 years ago at the time of his
>
> retirement from Bell Labs. He was delighted that he was now  a
>
> contract employee and no longer had to fill out a
>
> certain form annually and answer a question something like:
>
> "What have you done for Bell Labs this year?"
>
> Free at last.
>
> -Tom West
>
>
> On Oct 13, 2011, at 5:19 PM, Nick LaForge wrote:
>
>>> It is so sad that the people most responsible for the key software
>>> technologies are almost unheard of by the general public, and most
>>> credit seems to be given to people that jump on the bandwagon much
>>> later..
>>
>>> If there was a Nobel prize for software, dmr would have been one of
>>> the top on my list.
>>
>> The public's traditional fascination with physics makes an interesting
>> comparison, considering the relative obscurity computer science
>> enjoys.
>>
>> Physics' gifts include nuclear fission, medical imaging, aerospace,
>> semiconducting... the list is enumerable. Yet the greatest celebrity
>> among physicists undoubtedly is Albert Einstein, who's contributions
>> are most significant theoretically (aerospace aside).  So it seems
>> fitting that a similarly theoretical and precise discipline like
>> computer science should enjoy comparable status (in opposition to the
>> actual situation where Gates and Jobs get the glory).  Ironically, the
>> real reason for mathematics omission by Nobel likely was that Alfred
>> Nobel thought it TOO theoretical a discipline (see
>> http://mathforum.org/social/articles/ross.html).  Regardless, it took
>> people like dmr (and Turing, Church, Shannon, Neumann, Dijkstra,
>> Backus, Forsythe, Floyd, Hoare, Knuth, ...) to map abstract
>> mathematical science onto workable machines.
>>
>> Maybe such a collaborative science doesn't permit hero worship?  Dmr's
>> own publicly visible accomplishments alone make him worthy of it, yet
>> his humility was so apparent ("I'm not a person who particularly had
>> heros when growing up").  Perhaps his behind-the-scenes impact among
>> his colleagues at Bell Labs eclipse even what everyone else can see.
>>
>> But it's still sad that among those acquainted with Einstein and his
>> contributions, less than 1% seem to even know who Turing was.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>
>
>



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