Donald Shell

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Donald L. Shell (March 1, 1924 - ) was an American computer scientist who designed the "Shell sort" sorting algorithm. He acquired his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati in 1959, ofter publishing the shell sort algorythm in the Communications of the ACM, Volume 2 Number 7, in July the same year.

[edit] Biography

Donald L. Shell was born on a farm near Croswell, Michigan, on March 1, 1924. Because of his aptitude for education, the day of his sixth birthday he started studying at the local school house. He progressed quickly and went to Michigan Technological University where he acquired a BS in Civil Engineering in three years.

After acquiring the BS, he went into the Army Corps of Engineers, and from there to Philippines to help repair damages during the World War II. When he returned after the war, he married Alice McCullough and returned to Michigan Technological University, where he taught mathematics. After, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and worked for General Electric's engines division, where he developed a convergence algorithm and wrote a program to perform calculations for the performance cycle for aircraft jet engine. He also went to the University of Cincinnati, where in 1951 he acquired a M.S. in mathematics, and 8 years later, in 1959, he acquired his Ph.D. in Mathematics. in July the same year he published the shell sort algorithm and "The Share 709 System: A Cooperative Effort" in the Communications of the ACM, Volume 2 Number 7. The year before, in 1958, he and A. Spitzbart published "A Chebycheff Fitting Criterion".

After acquiring his Ph.D., Dr. Shell moved to Schenectady, New York, to become Manager of Engineering for a new department of General Electric known as the Information Services Department, the first commercial enterprise to link computers together with the client-server architecture. In October, 1962 he wrote "On the Convergence of Infinite Exponentials" in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. He worked with John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz to commercialize the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System in 1963.

In 1971 Dr. Shell wrote "Optimizing the Polyphase Sort" in the Communications of the ACM, and in 1972 he joined with Mr. Ralph Mosher, a close friend and colleague, to start a business called Robotics Inc. where he was the General Manager and chief software engineer. Four years later, in 1976, they sold the company and Dr. Shell returned to General Electric Information Services Corporation. In 1984 he retired and moved to North Carolina where he lives.