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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Dr. Leslie Lamport (born February 7, 1941 in New York City) is an American computer scientist. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he received a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Brandeis 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 analytic partial differential equations. [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 system LaTeX. [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, and Compaq. In 2001 he joined Microsoft Research at Mountain View, California.

Lamport’s research contributions have laid the foundations of the theory of distributed systems. 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 as logical clocks (and the "happened-before" relationship) and Byzantine failures. 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:
* the Paxos algorithm for consensus,
* the bakery algorithm for mutual 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 the temporal 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 the IEEE 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 the Dijkstra 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 scheme

References

External links

* [http://www.lamport.org/ Leslie Lamport’s home page]