Hal Abelson

Last updated
Hal Abelson
HalAbelsonJI1.jpg
Abelson in 2007
Born
Harold Abelson

(1947-04-26) April 26, 1947 (age 77) [1]
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Computer science education
Amorphous computing
Institutions Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis Topologically Distinct Conjugate-Varieties with Finite Fundamental-Group  (1973)
Doctoral advisor Dennis Sullivan [4]
Doctoral students
Website www.csail.mit.edu/person/hal-abelson OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Harold Abelson (born April 26, 1947) [1] is an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science and engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a founding director of both Creative Commons [5] and the Free Software Foundation, [6] creator of the MIT App Inventor platform, and co-author of the widely-used textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs , sometimes also referred to as "the wizard book."

Contents

He directed the first implementation of the language Logo for the Apple II, which made the language widely available on personal computers starting in 1981; and published a widely selling book on Logo in 1982. Together with Gerald Jay Sussman, Abelson developed MIT's introductory computer science subject, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (called by the course number, 6.001), a subject organized around the idea that a computer language is primarily a formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology, rather than just a way to get a computer to perform operations. Abelson and Sussman also cooperate in codirecting the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation. The MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) project was spearheaded by Abelson and other MIT faculty. [2]

Abelson led an internal investigation of MIT's choices and role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which concluded that MIT did nothing wrong legally, but recommended that MIT consider changing some of its internal policies.

Education

Abelson graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Princeton University in 1969 after completing a senior thesis on Actions with fixed-point set: a homology sphere, supervised by William Browder. [4] [7]

He received his PhD in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973 after completing his research on Topologically distinct conjugate varieties with finite fundamental group supervised by Dennis Sullivan. [8] [9]

Career and research

Abelson is also a founding director of Creative Commons and Public Knowledge, and a director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. [10] [11] [12] [8]

Computer science education

Abelson has a longstanding interest in using computation as a conceptual framework in teaching. He directed the first implementation of Logo for the Apple II, which made the language widely available on personal computers starting in 1981; and published a widely selling book on Logo in 1982. His book Turtle Geometry, written with Andrea diSessa in 1981, presented a computational approach to geometry which has been cited as "the first step in a revolutionary change in the entire teaching/learning process." In March 2015, a copy of Abelson's 1969 implementation of Turtle graphics was sold at The Algorithm Auction, the world’s first auction of computer algorithms. [13]

Together with Gerald Jay Sussman, Abelson developed MIT's introductory computer science subject, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a subject organized around the notion that a computer language is primarily a formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology, rather than just a way to get a computer to perform operations. This work, through the textbook of the same name, videotapes of their lectures, and the availability on personal computers of the Scheme dialect of Lisp (used in teaching the course), has had a worldwide impact on university computer science education. [14] [15]

He is a visiting faculty member at Google, where he was part of the App Inventor for Android team, an educational program aiming to make it easy for people with no programming background to write mobile phone applications and "explore whether this could change the nature of introductory computing". [16] He is coauthor of the book App Inventor with David Wolber, Ellen Spertus, and Liz Looney, published by O'Reilly Media in 2011. [17] [18] [19] After Google released App Inventor as open source software in late 2009 and provided seed funding to the MIT Media Lab in 2011, Abelson became codirector of the MIT Center for Mobile Learning to continue development of App Inventor. [20]

Computing tools

Abelson and Sussman also cooperate in codirecting the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation, a project of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), formerly a joint project of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab) and MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), CSAIL's components. The goal of the project is to create better computational tools for scientists and engineers. But even with powerful numerical computers, exploring complex physical systems still requires substantial human effort and human judgement to prepare simulations and to interpret numerical results. [6]

Together with their students, Abelson and Sussman are combining methods from numerical computation, symbolic algebra, and heuristic programming to develop programs that not only perform massive numerical computations, but that also interpret these computations and discuss the results in qualitative terms. Programs such as these could form the basis for intelligent scientific instruments that monitor physical systems based upon high-level behavioral descriptions. More generally, they could lead to a new generation of computational tools that can autonomously explore complex physical systems, and which will play an important part in the future practice of science and engineering. At the same time, these programs incorporate computational formulations of scientific knowledge that can form the foundations of better ways to teach science and engineering. [6]

Free software movement

Abelson and Sussman have also been a part of the free software movement (FSM), including serving on the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). [21]

Abelson is known to have been involved in publishing Andrew Huang's Hacking the Xbox and Keith Winstein's seven-line Perl DeCSS script (named qrpff), and Library Access to Music Project (LAMP), MIT's campus-wide music distribution system. The MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) project was spearheaded by Hal Abelson and other MIT faculty. [15] [22]

Aaron Swartz investigation

In January 2013, open access activist Aaron Swartz died by suicide. He had been arrested near MIT and was facing up to 35 years imprisonment for the alleged crime of downloading Journal Storage (JSTOR) articles through MIT's open access campus network. [23]

In response, MIT appointed professor Hal Abelson to lead an internal investigation of the school's choices and role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz by the FBI. [24] [25] [26] The report was delivered on July 26, 2013. It concluded that MIT did nothing wrong legally, but recommended that MIT consider changing some of its internal policies. [27]

Awards and honors

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logo (programming language)</span> Computer programming language

Logo is an educational programming language, designed in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon. Logo is not an acronym: the name was coined by Feurzeig while he was at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and derives from the Greek logos, meaning 'word' or 'thought'.

<i>Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs</i> Computer science textbook

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a computer science textbook by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. It is known as the "Wizard Book" in hacker culture. It teaches fundamental principles of computer programming, including recursion, abstraction, modularity, and programming language design and implementation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Jay Sussman</span> American computer scientist

Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been involved in artificial intelligence (AI) research at MIT since 1964. His research has centered on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing it to provide more effective methods of science and engineering education. Sussman has also worked in computer languages, in computer architecture, and in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory</span> CS and AI Laboratory at MIT (formed by merger in 2003)

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Housed within the Ray and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of the Schwarzman College of Computing but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shafi Goldwasser</span> Israeli American computer scientist (born 1959)

Shafrira Goldwasser is an Israeli-American computer scientist and winner of the Turing Award in 2012. She is the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a professor of mathematical sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel; the director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California, Berkeley; and co-founder and chief scientist of Duality Technologies.

<i>Turtle Geometry</i>

Turtle Geometry is a college-level math text written by Hal Abelson and Andrea diSessa which aims to engage students in exploring mathematical properties visually via a simple programming language to maneuver the icon of a turtle trailing lines across a personal computer display.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silvio Micali</span> Italian-American computer scientist (born 1954)

Silvio Micali is an Italian computer scientist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of Algorand, a proof-of-stake blockchain cryptocurrency protocol. Micali's research at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory centers on cryptography and information security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles E. Leiserson</span> American computer scientist

Charles Eric Leiserson is a computer scientist and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). He specializes in the theory of parallel computing and distributed computing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F. Thomson Leighton</span> American computer scientist

Frank Thomson "Tom" Leighton is an American mathematician who is the CEO of Akamai Technologies, the company he co-founded with the late Daniel Lewin in 1998. Leighton discovered a solution to free up web congestion using applied mathematics and distributed computing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Spertus</span> American computer scientist

Ellen R. Spertus is an American computer scientist who is currently the Elinor Kilgore Snyder Professor of computer science at Mills College, Oakland, California, and a former senior research scientist at Google.

Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (SICM) is a classical mechanics textbook written by Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom with Meinhard E. Mayer. The first edition was published by MIT Press in 2001, and a second edition was released in 2015. The book is used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach a class in advanced classical mechanics, starting with Lagrange's equations and proceeding through canonical perturbation theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Programming language theory</span> Branch of computer science

Programming language theory (PLT) is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of formal languages known as programming languages. Programming language theory is closely related to other fields including mathematics, software engineering, and linguistics. There are a number of academic conferences and journals in the area.

The MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department is an engineering department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is regarded as one of the most prestigious in the world, and offers degrees of Master of Science, Master of Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy, and Doctor of Science. 

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MIT App Inventor</span> Web application development environment

MIT App Inventor is a high-level block-based visual programming language, originally built by Google and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It allows newcomers to create computer applications for two operating systems: Android and iOS, which, as of 25 September 2023, is in beta testing. It is free and open-source released under dual licensing: a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license and an Apache License 2.0 for the source code. Its target is primarily children and students studying computer programming, similar to Scratch.

William Eric Leifur Grimson is a Canadian-born computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served as Chancellor from 2011 to 2014. An expert in computer vision, he headed MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 2005 to 2011 and currently serves as its Chancellor for Academic Advancement.

Keith Jonathan Winstein is a U.S. computer scientist and journalist. He is currently a professor at Stanford University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Edelman</span> American mathematician

Alan Stuart Edelman is an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Principal Investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) where he leads a group in applied computing. In 2004, he founded a business called Interactive Supercomputing which was later acquired by Microsoft. Edelman is a fellow of American Mathematical Society (AMS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), for his contributions in numerical linear algebra, computational science, parallel computing, and random matrix theory. He is one of the creators of the technical programming language Julia.

George Springer was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was professor emeritus of computer science at Indiana University Bloomington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blockly</span> JavaScript library

Blockly is a client-side library for the programming language JavaScript for creating block-based visual programming languages (VPLs) and editors. A project of Google, it is free and open-source software released under the Apache License 2.0. It typically runs in a web browser, and visually resembles the language Scratch.

Amber Settle is an American computer scientist and professor of education and theory in the department of Computer Science at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She is known for her work in computer science education and her continuing service and leadership in Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). She is also known for her work on computational thinking.

References

  1. 1 2 Date information sourced from Library of Congress Authorities data, via corresponding WorldCat Identities  linked authority file (LAF).
  2. 1 2 Abelson, Hal (2008). "The Creation of OpenCourseWare at MIT". Journal of Science Education and Technology. 17 (2): 164–174. Bibcode:2008JSEdT..17..164A. doi:10.1007/s10956-007-9060-8. hdl: 1721.1/37585 . S2CID   110449905.
  3. 1 2 Abelson, Harold; Sussman, Gerald Jay; Sussman, Julie (1996). Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Second Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN   0-262-51087-1.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Hal Abelson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  5. "Creative Commons: History". Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2011-10-09.
  6. 1 2 3 www.csail.mit.edu/person/hal-abelson OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  7. Abelson, Harold (1969). Actions with fixed-point set : a homology sphere. Princeton, NJ: Department of Mathematics.
  8. 1 2 Abelson, Hal (September 17, 2015). "Hal Abelson". Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  9. Abelson, Harold (1973). Topologically distinct conjugate varieties with finite fundamental group. mit.edu (PhD thesis). MIT. OCLC   30082612 . Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  10. Hal Abelson Playlist Archived 2019-03-14 at the Wayback Machine Appearance on WMBR's Dinnertime Sampler Archived 2011-05-04 at the Wayback Machine radio show May 7, 2003
  11. Abelson on Computer Science Education on YouTube
  12. Q&A with Professor Hal Abelson of MIT on Research at Google
  13. "Hal Abelson – Turtle Geometry". Artsy. 1969. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  14. Harvey, Brian (2011). "Why Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs matters". Cs.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  15. 1 2 3 "Hal Abelson – Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award – United States – 2011". Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved 2013-10-11.
  16. Abelson, Hal (July 31, 2009). "App Inventor for Android". Official Google Research Blog. Retrieved August 7, 2009.
  17. Wolber, David; Abelson, Hal; Spertus, Ellen; Looney, Liz (2011-05-03). App Inventor . O'Reilly Media. ISBN   9781449308650.
  18. "App Inventor 2, 2nd Edition". O’Reilly: Safari. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
  19. 1 2 "App Inventor 2: Create your own Android Apps". AppInventor.org. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
  20. "MIT Launches New Center for Mobile Learning". MIT News Office. 16 August 2011. Archived from the original on 25 August 2011.
  21. 1 2 3 "Staff and Board". Free Software Foundation . Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  22. Aufderheide, Patricia; Jaszi, Peter (2011). Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright. University of Chicago Press. p. 53. ISBN   9780226032443.
  23. "Alleged Hacker Charged with Stealing Over Four Million Documents from MIT Network". The United States Attorney's Office: District of Massachusetts. US Department of Justice. July 19, 2011. Archived from the original on May 26, 2012. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
  24. Smith, Gerry (January 15, 2013). "Aaron Swartz Case 'Snowballed Out of MIT's Hands,' Source Says". Huffington Post. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  25. Smith, Gerry (January 15, 2013). "President Reif writes to MIT community regarding Aaron Swartz,' Source Says". MIT News. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  26. Smith, Gerry (January 15, 2013). "Anonymous hacks MIT sites to post Aaron Swartz tribute, call to arms' Source Says". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  27. Abelson, Hal (July 26, 2013). "Report to the President: MIT and the Prosecution of Aaron Swartz" (PDF). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2013-08-02.
  28. "Taylor L. Booth Education Award". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on January 10, 2011. Retrieved March 28, 2011.
  29. "SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education". SIGCSE. Archived from the original on July 17, 2012. Retrieved June 21, 2012.
  30. Abelson, Harold; diSessa, Andrea (June 1981). Turtle Geometry: The Computer As a Medium for Exploring Mathematics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-01063-4.
  31. Abelson, Harold; Ledeen, Ken; Lewis, Harry R. (June 20, 2008). Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion. Saddle River, New Jersey: Addison-Wesley. ISBN   978-0-13-713559-2.
  32. "Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion". Blown to Bits. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
  33. Wolber, David; Abelson, Harold; Spertus, Ellen; Looney, Liz (2014). App Inventor 2: Create Your Own Android Apps 2nd Edition. O'Reilly Media. ISBN   978-1491906842.