M. Douglas McIlroy
douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu
http:/www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug

An adjunct professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, M. Douglas
McIlroy retired in 1997 from Bell Laboratories (successively a part of
AT&T and its spinoff Lucent Technologies, since acquired by Alcatel then
Nokia).  At Bell Labs he headed a computer-science research department
from 1965 to 1986, and thereafter served as Distinguished Member of
Technical Staff.  His department did wide-ranging theoretical and applied
research in automata theory, programming languages, compilers, design
verification, algorithms, computational complexity, text processing,
graphics, image processing, and computer security. It is best known,
though, as the birthplace of the Unix operating system, a model that
has stood the test of time and underlies many modern operating systems,
including Android, macOS and Linux.

In the area of computer languages, McIlroy participated in the design
of PL/I (a general-purpose language of the 1960's), contributed to
C++, and wrote unusual compilers for PL/I, Lisp, Altran (an algebraic
manipulation system), and TMG (a compiler-writing tool).  Long interested
in data-stream processing, he conceived "pipes" for combining Unix
programs, invented the classic coroutine prime-number sieve, and developed
algorithms for processing power series.  Other research topics include
text and string processing, computer cartography, theorem proving, and
dynamic storage allocation.  The notion of "language extension" arose
from his early work in macroprocessors, and "software components" from
a paper he presented at the first conference on software engineering.
In a lighter vein, he coauthored Darwin, the first game of survival
among self-reproducing programs, and used the computer for word games.
In his later years at Bell Labs his research addressed multilevel security
for Unix, ultimately accurate bitmap graphics, and full-text indexing.
At Dartmouth he used Haskell to obtain strikingly simple stream-based
programs for power series and regular languages.

McIlroy contributed to the design and construction of the Multics
operating system.  To Unix he contributed many utilities and subroutines,
including "diff" for comparing files, "spell" for checking spelling,
"join" for manipulating databases, and "speak", the first real-time
text-to-speech program.

McIlroy joined Bell Laboratories in 1958 after earning a bachelor's
degree in engineering physics from Cornell University and a PhD in
applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He taught while at MIT, and was a visiting lecturer at Oxford University
from 1967 to 1968.

He served the Association for Computing Machinery as national lecturer,
Turing award chairman, member of the publications planning committee,
and associate editor for the Communications of the ACM, the Journal of
the ACM, and ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems.
He also served on the executive committee of CSNET (an evolutionary
stage between the exclusive ARPANET and the public Internet), on various
advisory panels to the Department Defense, the New Jersey Board of Higher
Education, and the National Science Foundation, and on visiting committees
at Argonne National Laboratories, Syracuse University, and the University
of Texas at Austin.  He coauthored several National Research Council
reports, including "Computers at Risk" (computer security, 1990) and
"Computing the Future" (directions for academic computer science, 1992).
He is a past officer of the New York Map Society, a founding member of
the International Federation of Information Processing Societies working
group on programming methodology (WG2.3), and a fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 2004 the Usenix Association presented McIlroy its lifetime
achievement award "for over fifty years of elegant contributions to
Unix and programming", and also its Software Tools User Group award.
In 2006 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

In his previous home town of Bernardsville, New Jersey, McIlroy served
as chairman of the shade tree commission, chairman of the environmental
commission, alternate member of the planning board, and trustee of the
public library.  He now lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he served
on the conservation commission and chaired the trails committee, on
which he still serves. His family has a summer camp at Piseco, New York,
where he serves on the board of the Irondequoit Conservation Society,
a local land trust. Barbara McIlroy, his wife for over 50 years, is also
active in various conservation organizations.

last modified April 2023