Photo of Barbara Jane Liskov

Barbara Jane Liskov

1939 - Present
Computer Science
USA USA

Personal Information

Born: 1939

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: White

Education

UC Berkeley BS Mathematics 1961; Stanford University PhD Computer Science 1968

Professional Life

Field of Study: Computer Science

Institution/Corporation: MIT; Mitre corporation

Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degree: University of Lugano (2011), Universidad Polecnica de Madrid (2018); Member: National Academy of engineers, National Academy of Sciences, Fellow American Association of Arts & Sciences, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Awards & Achievements

Awards: IEEE CS Pioneer Award; 2004, IEEE John von Neumann Medal; 2012, National Inventors Hall of Fame; 2018, Computer Pioneer Award; 2002, named 1 of the Top Women Faculty Members at MIT; 2002, named among the Top 50 Faculty Members in the Sciences in the U.S.; 2002, named 1 of the 50 Most Important Women in Science, Discover magazine; 2005, ETH Honorary Doctorate (with Donald E. Knuth); 2008, Turing Award, ACM; 2008, Institute Professor, MIT

Achievements: Programming Languages and System Design; recent work focuses on Byzantine fault tolerance

Invented the notion of data abstraction & her group designed & implemented CLU, the 1st computer language to support it

2nd female recipient of the Turing Award (2008)

1968, one of the 1st women in the US granted a PhD from a computer science department

Developed killer heuristic, a move-ordering method

Developed Argus, a programming language, in the 1980s

Holds 15 patents