Harold Lawson

For other people named Harry Lawson, see Harry Lawson (disambiguation).
Harold Lawson in 2017.

Harold W. "Bud" Lawson (1937–2019) was a software engineer, computer architect and systems engineer. Lawson is credited with the 1964 invention of the pointer in high-level programming languages (with "a lot of comments" from Donald Knuth and Douglas McIlroy).[1][2] In 2000, Lawson was presented the Computer Pioneer Award by the IEEE[3] for his invention.

In July, 2010 he published a new book entitled A Journey Through the Systems Landscape (ISBN 978-1-84890-010-3) with College Publications. The book provides a comprehensive discipline-independent approach to learning to "think" and "act" in terms of systems.

Amongst several academic appointments, his last position was as Professor of Telecommunications and Computer Systems at Linköping University where he co-founded its Department of Computer and Information Science in 1983.[4]

He is a Fellow of ACM, Fellow and Life Member of the IEEE, and Fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering INCOSE IEEE Charles Babbage Computer Pioneer and INCOSE Systems Engineering Pioneer.

Bud died in Stockholm on June 10, 2019, after a period of illness.[5]

References

  1. ^ Milestones in Computer Science and Information Technology
  2. ^ Lawson, Harold; Bromberg, Howard (June 12, 1997). "The World's First COBOL Compilers". Archived from the original on June 4, 2004.
  3. ^ "IEEE Computer Society awards list". Archived from the original on 2011-03-22. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  4. ^ "Harold Lawson Biography at IEEE". Archived from the original on 2012-01-27. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
  5. ^ "2019 - Ida". 14 January 2019.

6. Alvaro Videla. Kateryna L. Yushchenko — Inventor of Pointers (Dec 8, 2018). A Computer of One's Own Pioneers of the Computing Age https://medium.com/a-computer-of-ones-own/kateryna-l-yushchenko-inventor-of-pointers-6f2796fa1798


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