- Leslie Lamport
Infobox_Scientist
name = Leslie Lamport
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birth_date =February 7 ,1941
birth_place =New York City ,New York
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field =Computer Science
work_institution =Microsoft Research Compaq Digital Equipment Corporation SRI International
alma_mater =Brandeis University
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known_for =LaTeX Byzantine fault tolerance Paxos algorithm
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prizes =Dijkstra Prize
IEEE John von Neumann Medal
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footnotes =Dr. Leslie Lamport (born
February 7 ,1941 inNew York City ) is an American computer scientist. A graduate of theBronx High School of Science , he received a B.S. inmathematics from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics fromBrandeis University , respectively in 1963 and 1972.cite web|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|title=My Writings|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html|date=2006-12-19 |accessdate=2007-02-02|curly=yes] His dissertation was about singularities in analyticpartial differential equation s. [cite paper |first=Leslie |last=Lamport |title=The Analytic Cauchy Problem with Singular Data |year=1972 |url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#thesis |accessdate=2007-02-02] Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems and as the initial developer of the document preparation systemLaTeX . [cite web| book|curly=yes|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|title=LaTeX: A Document Preparation System|year=1986|publisher=Addison-Wesley|isbn=0-201-15790-X|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#latex|accessdate=2007-02-02]Professionally, Lamport worked as a computer scientist at Massachusetts Computer Associates,
SRI International ,Digital Equipment Corporation , andCompaq . In 2001 he joinedMicrosoft Research atMountain View, California .Lamport’s research contributions have laid the foundations of the theory of
distributed system s. Among his most notable papers are
* “Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System”, [cite journal|curly=yes|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|year=1978|month=July|title=Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System|journal=Communications of the ACM|volume=21|issue=7|pages=558–565|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#time-clocks|accessdate=2007-02-02|doi=10.1145/359545.359563] which received the PODC Influential Paper Award in 2000, [cite web|curly=yes|last=Neiger|first=Gil|title=PODC Influential Paper Award: 2000|date=2003-01-23 |url=http://www.podc.org/influential/2000.html|accessdate=2007-02-02]
* “The Byzantine Generals Problem”, [cite journal|curly=yes|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|coauthors=Robert Shostak, Marshall Pease|year=1982|month=July|title=The Byzantine Generals Problem|journal=ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems|volume=4|issue=3|pages=382–401|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#byz|accessdate=2007-02-02|doi=10.1145/357172.357176]
* “Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of a Distributed System” [cite journal|curly=yes|last=Chandy|first=K. Mani|coauthors=Leslie Lamport|year=1985|month=February|title=Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of a Distributed System|journal=ACM Transactions on Computer Systems|volume=3|issue=1|pages=63–75|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#chandy|accessdate=2007-02-02|doi=10.1145/214451.214456] and
* “The Part-Time Parliament”. [cite journal|curly=yes|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|year=1998|month=May|title=The Part-Time Parliament|journal=ACM Transactions on Computer Systems|volume=16|issue=2|pages=133–169|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos|accessdate=2007-02-02|doi=10.1145/279227.279229] These papers relate to such concepts aslogical clocks (and the "happened-before " relationship) andByzantine failure s. They are among the most cited papers in the field of computer science [cite web|title=Most cited articles in Computer Science|date=2006-09|url=http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/articles.html|accessdate=2007-10-08] and describe algorithms to solve many fundamental problems in distributed systems, including:
* thePaxos algorithm for consensus,
* the bakery algorithm formutual exclusion of multiple threads in a computer system that require the same resources at the same time and
* the snapshot algorithm for the determination of consistent global states.Lamport is also known for his work on
temporal logic , where he introduced thetemporal logic of actions (TLA). [cite paper |first=Leslie |last=Lamport |title=A Temporal Logic of Actions |date=1990-04-01 |url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#old-tla-src |accessdate=2007-02-02] [cite journal |last=Lamport |first=Leslie |year=1994 |month=May |title=The Temporal Logic of Actions |journal=ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=872–923 |url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-actions|accessdate=2007-02-02 |doi=10.1145/177492.177726] Among his more recent contributions is TLA+, a logic for specifying and reasoning about concurrent and reactive systems, that he describes in the book “Specifying Systems: The TLA+ Language and Tools for Hardware and Software Engineers” [cite book|curly=yes|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|year=2002|title=Specifying Systems: The TLA+ Language and Tools for Hardware and Software Engineers|publisher=Addison-Wesley|isbn=0-321-14306-X|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/tla/book.html|accessdate=2007-02-02] and defines as a “quixotic attempt to overcome engineers' antipathy towards mathematics”. [cite web |title=The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks keynote speaker biography |url=http://2004.dsn.org/keynote.html |accessdate=2007-03-06]Lamport received four honorary doctorates from European universities: University of Rennes and Christian Albrechts University of Kiel in 2003,
EPFL in 2004 and University of Lugano in 2006. In 2004, he received theIEEE Piore Award. [cite web|curly=yes|title=IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients|url=http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/pr/piorepr.html|accessdate=2007-02-02] In 2005, the paper “Reaching Agreement in the Presence of Faults” [cite journal|curly=yes|last=Pease|first=Marshall|coauthors=Robert Shostak, Leslie Lamport|year=1980|month=April|title=Reaching Agreement in the Presence of Faults|journal=Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery|volume=27|issue=2|url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#reaching|accessdate=2007-02-02] received theDijkstra Prize . [cite web|curly=yes|title=Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing: 2005|url=http://www.podc.org/dijkstra/2005.html|accessdate=2007-02-02]Lamport is the author of the
aphorism : [cite web|title=Distribution e-mail|last=Lamport|first=Leslie|date=1987-05-28 |url=http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/distributed-system.txt|accessdate=2007-04-16]See also
*
Lamport signature - The Lamport one-time signature scheme is a method for constructing a digital signature.
*S/KEY - a one-time password system sometimes referred to as Lamport's schemeReferences
External links
* [http://www.lamport.org/ Leslie Lamport’s home page]
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