Name: Leslie Lamport

Born: February 7, 1941, in New York City, New York, USA

  • American computer scientist best known for his seminal work in distributed systems and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX.
  • Laid the foundations of the theory of distributed systems and his papers on the subject are among the most cited papers in the field of Computer Science.

Significant publications

  • Specifying Systems: The TLA+ Language and Tools for Hardware and Software Engineers (2002).
  • LaTeX: A Document Preparation System (1994).

Honors and awards

  • Elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences (2011).
  • IEEE John von Neumann Medal (2008).
  • Dijkstra Prize (2005).
  • IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (2004).
  • Edsger Dijkstra

Quotes

“A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn’t even know existed can render your own computer unusable.”

Websites

  • Leslie Lamport personal website