Robert Taylor (computer scientist)

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For other persons named Robert Taylor, see Robert Taylor (disambiguation).

Robert W. Taylor (born 1932) was director of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (1965-69), founder and later manager of Xerox PARC's Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) (1970-83), and founder and manager of Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center (1983-96).

Bob Taylor was born in Texas, the son of a Methodist minister. Taylor was trained as an experimental psychologist and mathematician and his earliest career was devoted to brain research and the auditory nervous system. After working for a defense contractor, Martin Marietta, and after he submitted a research proposal to NASA, Taylor was invited to joined NASA in 1961.

J.C.R. Licklider and Taylor co-authored the seminal paper, "The Computer as a Communication Device," Science and Technology, April 1968.

In 1984, Taylor, Butler Lampson, and Charles P. Thacker received the ACM Software Systems Award "For conceiving and guiding the development of the Xerox Alto System demonstrating that a distributed personal computer system can provide a desirable and practical alternative to time-sharing." (In 1994, all three were named ACM Fellows in recognition of the same work.) In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology "For visionary leadership in the development of modern computing technology, including computer networks, the personal computer and the graphical user interface." In 2004, he won the Charles Stark Draper Prize together with Alan Kay, Butler W. Lampson, and Charles P. Thacker "For the vision, conception, and development of the first practical networked personal computers."