John Vlissides

John Matthew Vlissides (August 2 1961 - November 24 2005) was a software scientist known mainly as one of the four authors (referred to as the Gang of Four) of the book "". Vlissides referred to himself as "#4 of the Gang of Four and wouldn't have it any other way".

Education/Career

Vlissides studied electrical engineering at University of Virginia and Stanford University. Since 1986 he worked as software engineer, consultant, research assistant and scholar at Stanford University. From 1991 he stayed at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, New York as research staff member. He was author of several books, of many magazine articles and conference papers and was awarded with several patents. His work concentrated on object oriented technology, design patterns and software modeling.

Death

John Vlissides died on Thanksgiving 2005 (November 24 2005) following a struggle with complications from a brain tumor. He was 44 years old.

Posthumous

Ward Cunningham and Grady Booch (on [http://www.booch.com/architecture/blog.jsp?archive=2005-11.html his blog entry of Nov 27] , relaying a call from John Vlissides's widow, Dru Ann) have called for stories to remember him by. Since then, there has been a steady inflow of contributions located at the WikiWikiWeb page for .

External links

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050206211551/www.research.ibm.com/people/v/vlis/ John's website] at IBM
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050207033016/www.research.ibm.com/people/v/vlis/pubs.html Selected publications]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050207033016/http://www.research.ibm.com/people/v/vlis/pubs/cv.pdf CV of Vlissides] (PDF file)
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120902004.html Obituary in Washington Post]
* [http://c2.com/ppr/wiki/ComponentDesignPatterns/JohnVlissides.html The wiki of John Vlissides]