Ole-Johan Dahl

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Ole-Johan Dahl

Born	October 12, 1931 Mandal, Norway
Died	June 29, 2002
Field	Computer Science
Institution	Norwegian Computing Center University of Oslo
Known for	Simula Object-oriented programming
Notable prizes	Turing Award

Ole-Johan Dahl (October 12, 1931 – June 29, 2002) was a Norwegian computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard.

Dahl, born in Mandal, Norway, is widely accepted as Norway’s foremost computer scientist. With Kristen Nygaard, he produced the initial ideas for object-oriented (OO) programming in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center (NR) as part of the Simula I (1961–1965) and Simula 67 (1965–1968) simulation programming languages. Dahl and Nygaard were the first to develop the concepts of class, subclass (allowing implicit information hiding), inheritance, dynamic object creation, etc., all important aspects of the OO paradigm. An object is a self-contained component (with a data structure and associated procedures or methods) in a software system. These are combined to form a complete system. The object-oriented approach is now pervasive in modern software development, including widely used imperative programming languages such as Java and C++.

Dahl became a full professor at the University of Oslo in 1968 and was a gifted teacher as well as researcher. Here he worked on Hierarchical Program Structures, probably his most influential publication, which appeared co-authored with C.A.R. Hoare in the influential book Structured Programming of 1972 by Dahl, Edsger Dijkstra and Hoare, perhaps the best-know academic book concerning software in the 1970s.

As his career progressed, Dahl became increasingly interested in the use of formal methods, to rigorously reason about object-orientation for example. Like all good computer scientists, his expertise ranged from the practical application of ideas to their formal mathematical underpinning to ensure the validity of the approach.

He received the Turing Award for his work in 2001.

[edit] Early papers

• Multiple index countings on the Ferranti Mercury computer / by O.-J. Dahl. Oslo: Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 1957.
• Programmer's handbook for the Ferranti Mercury Computer, Frederic at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment / By O.-J. Dahl, and Jan V. Garwick. – 2nd ed., Kjeller: Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 1958.
• Automatisk kodning: et prosjekt ved Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt.
• Simscript implementation / by Vic Bell and Ole-Johan Dahl. Oslo: Norwegian Computing Center, 1963.
• Basic concepts of SIMULA: an ALGOL based simulation language / by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Oslo: Norsk regnesentral, [1965?].
• SIMULA: a language for programming and description of discrete event systems : introduction and user's manual. Oslo: Norsk regnesentral, 1965.
• Discrete event simulation languages: lectures delivered at the NATO summer school, Villard-de-Lans, September 1966 / by Ole-Johan Dahl. Oslo: Norsk regnesentral/Norwegian Computing Center, 1966.
• SIMULA: an ALGOL based simulation language / by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Oslo: Norsk regnesentral, 1966.
• Simula: an ALGOL-based simulation language / Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 1966. I: Communications of the ACM; 9(1966).
• Class and subclass declarations / Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Amsterdam: North-Holland, c1968. I: Simulation programming languages: proceedings of the IFIP working conference on simulation programming languages, Oslo, May 1967 / O.-J. Dahl, conference chairman; organized by IFIP Technical Committee 2, programming languages; edited by J.N. Buxton.
• Discrete event simulation languages / Ole-Johan Dahl. London: Academic Press, 1968. (Programming languages : NATO Advanced Study Institute / edited by G. Genuys.)
• SIMULA 67: common base language / by Ole-Johan Dahl, Bjørn Myhrhaug and Kristen Nygaard. Oslo: Norsk regnesentral, 1968. (Publication S / Norwegian Computing Center; 2) Rev. 1970: Common base language (Publ.; 22).

[edit] References

• From Object-Orientation to Formal Methods: Essays in Memory of Ole-Johan Dahl, Olaf Owe, Stein Krogdahl and Tom Lyche (eds.), Springer, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 2635, 2004. ISBN 3-540-21366-X.
• Pioneer who Prepared the Ground for Road to Java, Jonathan Bowen. The Times Higher Education Supplement, 1677:34, 4 February 2005.

[edit] External links

• Home page
• Reference

Persondata
NAME	Dahl, Ole-Johan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	October 12, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mandal, Norway
DATE OF DEATH	June 29, 2002
PLACE OF DEATH