James G. Mitchell

Last updated
James George Mitchell
Born
Nationality Canadian
Citizenship United States
Alma mater University of Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon University
Known for WATFOR compiler, Mesa (programming language), Spring (operating system), ARM architecture
Awards J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation
Scientific career
Fields Computer science
Institutions Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Acorn Computers, Xerox PARC
Thesis The design and construction of flexible and efficient interactive programming systems  (1970)
Academic advisors J. Wesley Graham

James George Mitchell is a Canadian computer scientist. He has worked on programming language design and implementation (FORTRAN WATFOR, Mesa, Euclid, C++, Java), interactive programming systems, dynamic interpreting and compiling, document preparing systems, user interface design, distributed transactional file systems, and distributed, object-oriented operating systems. He has also worked on the design of hardware for computer graphics, high-level programming language execution, and audio input/output. [1]

Contents

Biography

Mitchell was born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He grew up in Cambridge, Ontario, and graduated with a degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo in 1966. Mitchell began working with computers in 1962 while a student at the University of Waterloo. He and three other undergraduates developed a fast compiler for the Fortran programming language named WATFOR (Waterloo FORTRAN), for the IBM 7040 computer. [2] The project, initiated by Professor J. Wesley Graham, established Waterloo's early reputation as a centre for software and computer science research by helping the first generation of computer science majors learn to program. He then graduated with a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1970. [3] His dissertation is titled “The design and construction of flexible and efficient interactive programming systems”. [4]

Career

From 1971 to 1984 Mitchell was at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and eventually became a Xerox Fellow. In 1980–81, he was Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. He was head of research and development for Acorn Computers (U.K.), where he managed the development of the first ARM architecture reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chip and was President of the Acorn Research Centre in Palo Alto, California.

Mitchell joined Sun Microsystems in 1988 and was in charge of the Spring distributed, object-oriented operating system research in Sun Microsystems Laboratories and the SunSoft subsidiary. He became Vice President of Technology & Architecture in the JavaSoft Division and then Chief Technology Officer, Java Consumer & Embedded products. Later, he was vice president in charge of Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Subsequently, he became Principal Investigator on the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Sun. When Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010, he was appointed Vice President of Photonics, Interconnects, and Packaging at Oracle Labs. On March 1, 2014, Mitchell retired from Oracle Labs. In 2013, he joined the board of directors of the Curci Foundation, which funds research in the life sciences. As of December 2021, he remains on the board, and is Science Advisory Board Chairperson. [5]

Honors

In 1997, he was awarded the J. W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation from the University of Waterloo. [6] [7]

In 2008, he was awarded the Fr. Norm Choate, CR, Distinguished Alumni Award from St. Jerome's University.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun Microsystems</span> American computer company, 1982–2010

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the Network File System (NFS), and SPARC microprocessors. Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. Notable Sun acquisitions include Cray Business Systems Division, Storagetek, and Innotek GmbH, creators of VirtualBox. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California, on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PARC (company)</span> American company

PARC is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a division of Xerox, tasked with creating computer technology-related products and hardware systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Gosling</span> Canadian computer scientist

James Gosling is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Rulifson</span> American computer scientist

Johns Frederick (Jeff) Rulifson is an American computer scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy L. Steele Jr.</span> American computer scientist (born 1954)

Guy Lewis Steele Jr. is an American computer scientist who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer programming languages and technical standards.

Paul H. Cress (1939–2004) was a Canadian computer scientist.

WATFIV, or WATerloo FORTRAN IV, developed at the University of Waterloo, Canada is an implementation of the Fortran computer programming language. It is the successor of WATFOR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Ingalls</span> American computer scientist

Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls Jr. is a pioneer of object-oriented computer programming and the principal architect, designer and implementer of five generations of Smalltalk environments. He designed the bytecoded virtual machine that made Smalltalk practical in 1976. He also invented bit blit, the general-purpose graphical operation that underlies most bitmap computer graphics systems today, and pop-up menus. He designed the generalizations of BitBlt to arbitrary color depth, with built-in scaling, rotation, and anti-aliasing. He made major contributions to the Squeak version of Smalltalk, including the original concept of a Smalltalk written in itself and made portable and efficient by a Smalltalk-to-C translator.

Fortress is a discontinued experimental programming language for high-performance computing, created by Sun Microsystems with funding from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems project. One of the language designers was Guy L. Steele Jr., whose previous work includes Scheme, Common Lisp, and Java.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Sproull</span> American computer scientist (born c. 1945)

Robert Fletcher "Bob" Sproull is an American computer scientist, who worked for Oracle Corporation where he was director of Oracle Labs in Burlington, Massachusetts. He is currently an adjunct professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science is a professional school within the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. QS World University Rankings ranked the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science 24th in the world, 10th in North America and 2nd in Canada in Computer Science in 2014. U.S. News & World Report ranked the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science 42nd in world and second in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Java (software platform)</span> Set of computer software and specifications

Java is a set of computer software and specifications that provides a software platform for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms from embedded devices and mobile phones to enterprise servers and supercomputers. Java applets, which are less common than standalone Java applications, were commonly run in secure, sandboxed environments to provide many features of native applications through being embedded in HTML pages.

The J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation is an award given annually by the University of Waterloo and the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics to "recognize the leadership and many innovative contributions made to the University of Waterloo, and to the Canadian computer industry." Recipients of this award receive a gold medal and certificate. Recipients are graduates of the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics from business, education, or government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wes Graham</span> Canadian computer scientist and professor

James Wesley Graham, OC was a Canadian professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo.

WATIAC was a virtual computer developed for teaching the principles of assembly language programming to undergraduates. WATIAC, and the WATMAP assembly language that ran on it were developed in 1973 by the newly founded Computer Systems Group, at the University of Waterloo, under the direction of Wes Graham.

WATBOL is a teaching compiler for the COBOL programming language developed in 1969 at the University of Waterloo. The compiler was a companion product, built under the design philosophy, of Waterloo's earlier, widely used WATFOR teaching compiler. Since programs written by undergraduate students were unlikely to be run more than a few times, after they were successfully written and debugged, the efficiency of the program, once compiled was of secondary importance, compared with giving simpler, clearer error messages, and in simplifying the steps for the student to compile the program. At that time executing a program through the use of commercial compiler was a three-step process. First the Fortran, or COBOL, had to be compiled into assembly language, then the assembly language had to be assembled into binary code; finally the compiled and assembled code had to be linked with previously written libraries of subroutines. WATFOR and WATBOL allowed simple programs to be compiled, linked, and executed in a single step.

Dave Boswell is a Canadian computer scientist who was awarded the J.W. Graham Medal for his contributions to the field in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Robinson (computer scientist)</span> Australian computer scientist (1938–2020)

Kenneth ("Ken") Arthur Robinson was an Australian computer scientist. He has been called "The Father of Formal Methods in Australia".

References

  1. "James Mitchell". The People at Oracle Labs. Oracle Corporation. Archived from the original on June 16, 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2011.
  2. Schick, Shane (2007-04-09). "U of Waterloo alumni look back on creator of Fortran variant: Wes Graham was critical to the development of popular WATFOR". IT Business. Archived from the original on 2012-03-08. Retrieved 2012-12-17. Mitchell, now a Sun Fellow at Sun Microsystems, wrote a student paper in 1965 about building a fast compiler. That's when he was called into Graham's office. "The teacher from the program was there, and the paper was on Graham's desk," Mitchell said. "He said, 'So, do you think you could really do this?' And I said 'Yes, with some extremely good programmers."'
  3. "Computer innovator to visit". news release. University of Waterloo. May 26, 1997. Retrieved April 3, 2011.
  4. Mitchell, James George (1970). The design and construction of flexible and efficient interactive programming systems (PhD). USA: Carnegie Mellon University.
  5. "Dr. James Mitchell". Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation. Torrance, California.
  6. "Java: Where You Want to *Be* Tomorrow: Dr. Jim Mitchell, 1997 Recipient of the J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation". University of Waterloo, Canada. May 30, 1997. Retrieved April 1, 2011.
  7. "Recipients of the J.W. Graham Medal in Computing & Innovation". University of Waterloo . Retrieved 2015-09-25.