Famous People (Quiz/Exam) Facts Flashcards
Who won the first Turing Award
Alan Perlis
Who wrote the merge sort algorithm?
John von Neumann
Test to determine a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior similar to an actual human
Alan Turing
Credited as father of computer science?
Alan Turing
Proposed early stored-program (general purpose) digital computer whose architecture is named after him?
John von Neumann
Did Grace Hopper win a turing award?
No
Known as the father of analysis of algorithms?
Donald Knuth
Apologized for inventing the null reference?
C.A.R. Hoare
Has an algorithm named after him/her?
Edsger Dijkstra
Inventor of quicksort
C.A.R. Hoare
Proved that what is now known as the halting problem is undecidable.
Alan Turing
Coined the term “artificial intelligence.”
John McCarthy
Main notation for expressing context-free grammars in programming
John Backus
Helped popularize the term “debugging.”
Grace Hopper
null reference self-described as a billion-dollar mistake.
C.A.R. Hoare
Shortest-Path algorithm.
Edsger Dijkstra
Invented Merge sort algorithm.
John von Neumann
Co-authored Concrete Mathematics (a blend of CONtinuous and disCRETE math) with Ron Graham.
Donald Knuth
“Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.”
Nikalaus Wirth
A case against the goto statement author.
Edsger W.Dijkstra
Conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL
Grace Hopper
A theoretical device representing a computing machine to understand limits of computation.
Truing Machine
“Will a program complete?”
Halting Problem
“Can machines think?”
Turing Test
What does the shunting-yard algorithm do?
Converts infix notation to RPN
Who invented the shunting-yard algorithm?
Edsger Dijisktra
What did Grace Hopper use a piece of wire just under one foot to demonstrate?
Distance radio waves travels in one nanosecond
Father of Fortran
John Backus
Father of Lisp
John McCarthy
Father of Pascal
Niklaus Wirth
Father of Garbage Collection
John McCarthy
Credited as being the theoretical father of computer virology for his design of a self-reproducing program
John von Neumann
