Charles Antony Richard Hoare
Born	January 11, 1934 (1934-01-11) (age 74) Colombo, Sri Lanka
Fields	Computer Scientist
Institutions	Elliott Brothers Queen's University of Belfast Oxford University Moscow State University Microsoft Research
Alma mater	Oxford University Moscow State University
Known for	Quicksort Hoare logic CSP
Notable awards	ACM Turing Award

Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (Tony Hoare or C.A.R. Hoare, born January 11, 1934) is a British computer scientist, probably best known for the development of Quicksort (or Hoaresort), the world's most widely used sorting algorithm^{[citation needed]}, in 1960. He also developed Hoare logic for verifying program correctness, and the formal language Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) used to specify the interactions of concurrent processes (including the Dining philosophers problem) and the inspiration for the Occam programming language. Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display full 1934 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Map of Colombo with its administrative districts Coordinates: , District Colombo District Government  - Mayor Uvaiz Mohammad Imitiyaz (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) Area  - City 37. ... Computer science (informally: CS or compsci) is, in its most general sense, the study of computation and information processing, both in hardware and in software. ... Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd was an early computer company of the 1950s–60s in the United Kingdom. ... The Queens University of Belfast (QUB) is a university in Belfast, Northern Ireland; the university is often called Queens University Belfast. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russian: Московский государственный университет имени Ðœ.Ð’.Ломоносова, often abbreviated МГУ, MSU, MGU) is the largest and the oldest university in Russia, founded in 1755. ... Microsoft Research (MSR) is a division of Microsoft created in 1991 for researching various computer science topics and issues. ... Alma mater is Latin for nourishing mother. It was used in ancient Rome as a title for the mother goddess, and in Medieval Christianity for the Virgin Mary. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russian: Московский государственный университет имени Ðœ.Ð’.Ломоносова, often abbreviated МГУ, MSU, MGU) is the largest and the oldest university in Russia, founded in 1755. ... Q sort redirects here. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... In computer science, Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is a formal language for describing patterns of interaction in concurrent systems. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display full 1934 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Q sort redirects here. ... In computer science and mathematics, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a list in a certain order. ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... In computer science, Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is a formal language for describing patterns of interaction in concurrent systems. ... The Dining Philosophers, a classic problem involving concurrency and shared resources In computer science, concurrency is a property of systems in which several computational processes are executing at the same time, and potentially interacting with each other. ... In computer science, the dining philosophers problem is an illustrative example of a common computing problem in concurrency. ... Occam is a parallel programming language that builds on Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) and shares many of their features. ...

Biography

Born in Colombo (Ceylon, now Sri Lanka) to British parents, he received his Bachelor's degree in Classics from the University of Oxford (Merton College) in 1956. He remained an extra year at Oxford studying graduate-level statistics, and following his National Service in the Royal Navy (1956–1958). When he learned to speak Russian, he studied computer translation of human languages at Moscow State University in the Soviet Union in the school of Kolmogorov. Map of Colombo with its administrative districts Coordinates: , District Colombo District Government  - Mayor Uvaiz Mohammad Imitiyaz (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) Area  - City 37. ... A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years. ... The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University), located in the city of Oxford, England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... National service is a common name for compulsory or voluntary military service programs. ... This article is about the navy of the United Kingdom. ... Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the acronym MT, is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. ... Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russian: Московский государственный университет имени Ðœ.Ð’.Ломоносова, often abbreviated МГУ, MSU, MGU) is the largest and the oldest university in Russia, founded in 1755. ... Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров) (kahl-mah-GAW-raff) (April 25, 1903 in Tambov - October 20, 1987 in Moscow) was a Russian mathematician who made major advances in the fields of probability theory and topology. ...

In 1960, he left the Soviet Union and began working at Elliott Brothers, Ltd, a small computer manufacturing firm, where he implemented ALGOL 60 and began developing algorithms in earnest.^[1] He became a Professor of Computing Science at the Queen's University of Belfast in 1968, and in 1977 moved back to Oxford as a Professor of Computing to lead the Programming Research Group in the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, following the death of Christopher Strachey. He is now an Emeritus Professor there, and is also a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd was an early computer company of the 1950s–60s in the United Kingdom. ... ALGOL (short for ALGOrithmic Language) is a programming language originally developed in the mid 1950s which became the de facto standard way to report algorithms in print for almost the next 30 years. ... The Queens University of Belfast (QUB) is a university in Belfast, Northern Ireland; the university is often called Queens University Belfast. ... The Programming Research Group is based at Oxford Universitys Computing Laboratory. ... The Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL) is the computer science department at Oxford University in England. ... Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) was a British computer scientist. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: [1]) varies. ... Microsoft Research (MSR) is a division of Microsoft created in 1991 for researching various computer science topics and issues. ... This article is about the city in England. ...

He is also the originator of the famous quote, "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." In computing, optimization is the process of modifying a system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources. ...

Awards

• He received the 1980 ACM Turing Award for "his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages". The award was presented to him at the ACM Annual Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 27, 1980, by Walter Carlson, Chairman of the Awards committee. A transcript of Hoare's speech was published in Communications of the ACM.^[1]
• Harry H. Goode Memorial Award in 1981
• On December 18th, 1987, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the Queen's University Belfast.
• In 2000 he was knighted for services to education and computer science.
• On Oct 13, 2006, the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, California inducted him as Fellow of the Museum "for development of the Quicksort algorithm and for lifelong contributions to the theory of programming languages".
• He received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) on September 24th, 2007, in Athens, Greece.

The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ... Nashville redirects here. ... is the 300th day of the year (301st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar). ... Communications of the ACM (CACM) is the flagship monthly magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery. ... Queens University Belfast is a university in Belfast, Northern Ireland and a member of the Russell Group (a lobby group of major research universities in the United Kingdom). ... The dignity of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... The Computer History Museum in Mountain View. ... Q sort redirects here. ... A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ... The Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB, ASOEE, or OPA) was founded in 1920 in Athens, Greece. ...

Books

• O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra and C. A. R. Hoare (1972). Structured Programming. Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-200550-3. 
• C. A. R. Hoare (1985). Communicating Sequential Processes, (available online at http://www.usingcsp.com/ in PDF format), Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science. ISBN 0-13-153271-5 hardback or ISBN 0-13-153289-8 paperback. 
• C. A. R. Hoare and M. J. C. Gordon (1992). Mechanised Reasoning and Hardware Design. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science. ISBN 0-13-572405-8. 
• C. A. R. Hoare and He Jifeng (1998). Unifying Theories of Programming. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science. ISBN 0-13-458761-8. 

Professor emeritus Ole-Johan Dahl (October 12, 1931 – June 29, 2002) was a Norwegian computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard. ... Edsger Dijkstra Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Rotterdam, May 11, 1930 – Nuenen, August 6, 2002; IPA: ) was a Dutch computer scientist. ... Academic Press (London, New York and San Diego) was an academic book publisher that is now part of Elsevier. ... In computer science, Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is a formal language for describing patterns of interaction in concurrent systems. ... Pearson can mean Pearson PLC the media conglomerate. ... Michael J.C. Gordon, British computer scientist (born 28 February 1948). ... Professor He Jifeng is a Chinese computer scientist. ... C. A. R. Hoare and He Jifeng, Unifying Theories of Programming. ...

References

1. ^ ^{a b} C.A.R. Hoare (February 1981). "The emperor's old clothes" (PDF). Communications of the ACM 24 (2): 5–83. doi:10.1145/358549.358561. ISSN 0001-0782. 

Communications of the ACM (CACM) is the flagship monthly magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... ISSN, or International Standard Serial Number, is the unique eight-digit number applied to a periodical publication including electronic serials. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

C. A. R. Hoare

• Microsoft home page — short biography
• Oxford University Computing Laboratory home page — Emeritus Professor of Computing
• Advice for Ph.D. students from Tony Hoare — held at the International Summer School Marktoberdorf 2006
• C. A. R. Hoare bibliography in the DBLP database

• The classic article on monitors — The original article on monitors that was republished as a classic of the ACM