David Gries (born 26 April 1939 in Flushing, Queens, New York) is a computer scientist at Cornell University. He is currently Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs in the College of Engineering. His research interests include programming methodology and related areas such as programming languages, programming language semantics, and logic. He has devoted much of his academic life to teaching these topics to undergraduate students. April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (117th in leap years). ... 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full year calendar). ... A few landmarks from two New York Worlds Fairs still stand in Flushing Meadows, including the US Steel Unisphere Flushing is a neighborhood within the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. ... 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. ... Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and in Education City, Qatar. ... The College of Engineering is a division of Cornell University that was founded in 1870 as the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts. ... In some educational systems, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a Bachelors degree. ...

Life

Gries graduated from Queens College in 1960. He spent the following two years working as a programmer-mathematician for the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, where he met his wife, Elaine. Queens College, Queens College or Queens College is the name of more than one institution, see: Queens College, Cambridge Queens College, Charlotte Queens College, Hong Kong Queens College, London Queens College, New York Queens College, Nassau The Queens College, Oxford Queens College was the... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... The United States Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD), named for Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, is located in Dahlgren, Virginia and is part of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. ...

Gries earned his Master's degree in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1963. While at Illinois, Gries worked with Manfred Paul and Ruediger Wiehle to write a full ALGOL compiler for the IBM 7090 computer. He earned his Dr. Rer. Nat. in 1966 from the Munich University of Technology, studying under Friedrich L. Bauer and Joseph Stoer. A masters degree is an academic degree usually awarded for completion of a postgraduate (or graduate) course of one to three years in duration. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), is the largest campus in the University of Illinois system. ... Algol (β Per / Beta Persei) is a bright star in the constellation Perseus. ... IBM 7090 console The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for large-scale scientific and technological applications. The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. ... Munich University of Technology, or Technical University of Munich (TUM) (German: Technische Universität München, TUM), is a major German university, located in Munich (and the towns of Garching and Weihenstephan out of Munich). ... Friedrich Ludwig Bauer (born June 10, 1924 in Regensburg) is a German computer scientist and professor emeritus at Munich University of Technology. ...

Gries was an assistant professor at Stanford University from 1966-1969 and then became an associate professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He spent the next 30 years there, including a stint as Chair of the Computer Science department from 1982-1987. He had a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984-1985. He spent 1999-2002 at the University of Georgia in Athens and returned to Cornell in January 2003. A professor is a senior teacher and researcher, usually in a college or university. ... The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles northwest of San José in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County. ... Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and in Education City, Qatar. ... The City of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York State. ... A chair or seat is also a seat of office, authority, or dignity, such as the chairperson of a committee, or a professorship at a college or university, or the individual that presides over business proceedings. ... Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. ... The University of Georgia (UGA) is the largest institution of higher learning in the state of Georgia. ... Athens is a city in Clarke County, Georgia, U.S., in the northeastern part of the state, at the eastern terminus of Georgia 316. ...

He is the author, co-author, or editor of seven textbooks and 75 research papers.

Awards

Gries is the only recipient of four major educator awards in computer science:

• the American Federation of Information Processing Societies' Education Award (1986)
• the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education (1991)
• the Institute for Electrical Engineers Computer Society Taylor Booth Education Award (1994)
• the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award (1995)

He holds two honorary doctorates: ACM is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below: Abstract Control Model Academy of Country Music Academic Common Market Academy of Contemporary Music Advanced Cruise Missile Adaptive Combat Model Aerial Combat Maneuver Air combat manoeuvering Air Cycle Machine Airspace Coordination Measure Adams Capital Management Advanced compact MOSFET...

• an honorary Doctor of Laws, Daniel Webster College, Nashua, New Hampshire (1996)
  
• an honorary Doctor of Science, Oxford University, Miami, Ohio (1999)

and is among the first ten Cornell faculty awarded a Cornell Weiss Presidential Fellowship for contributions to undergraduate education. In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the worlds first scientific and educational computing society. ...

External links

• Professor David Gries
• Cornell University Science News: Computer association names Cornell's Gries an outstanding educator
• [PhD students]
• Books by David Gries (listed on Amazon)