William Wulf, 1939–2023

Bill Wulf just passed away. We send our best thoughts to his dear wife Anita Jones and the rest of his family. He is greatly missed.

From the UVa obit: This image was algorithmically composed of more than 2,000 photos to illustrate Wulf’s influence on computer science, engineering and the University of Virginia.

CMU

Wulf started his great career as a faculty at CMU in 1968. He earned the first Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in the then newly founded Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science.

I met him after I started at CMU as a graduate student. He taught one of the required classes that I took. I still recall his ability to lecture on systems—an area that I did not expect to work in—it is not theory. But I recall his ability to explain and get us to be excited about systems. Thanks Bill.

Beyond CMU

Wulf had several impacts on CS. In 1970, when compiler technology was arguably only a dozen years old, he pioneered methods of optimizing the object code. He wrote a book about this titled, The Design of an Optimizing Compiler. He and Anita created the startup Tartan Laboratories with John Nestor to channel compiler optimization, especially for the then-new Ada programming language. Guy Steele is among several notable former employees of Tartan.

Wulf was elected to NAE in 1993 “for professional leadership and for contributions to programming systems and computer architecture”. He then served as NAE president from 1996 to 2007. He helped guide the NAE and get it redirected and made it a better organization.

He also did a famous job of resigning from the University of Virginia to protest the recent conduct of the UVa Board of Visitors in removing President Teresa Sullivan.

See this for the original news and his appeal, I urge my fellow faculty to join me. The links from that page are unrecoverable, but see this article in the Washington Post, which quotes his entire statement on why he refused to change his mind even after Sullivan was reinstated.

Open Problems

Again we thanks Wulf for his work that helped make CS a better place. He will be missed.