Alan C. Kay, Personal Computing Pioneer and UCLA Computer Scientist, to Receive Turing Award

Date: May 3, 2004
Contact: Chris Sutton ( chris@ea.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-206-0540

Alan C. Kay, an adjunct professor of computer science at UCLA and a senior fellow at HP labs, has been named winner of the 2003 Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Kay is widely known for his breakthrough concepts on personal computing and for leading the team that invented Smalltalk, the first complete dynamic object-oriented programming language. The Turing Award, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing," carries a $100,000 prize, with funding provided by Intel Corporation.

Smalltalk combined objects and messages using clear foundation concepts that represented a breakthrough in both language design and programming metaphors. It included a revolutionary visual authoring environment, using overlapping screen windows, that is now common in computer applications. The language is credited with heavily influencing the design of subsequent object-oriented languages including C++ and Java.

Kay has held a long and abiding interest in children and education. He is President of Viewpoints Research Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to children and learning that he founded in 2001. While at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Kay found that children learned better if touch, images and symbols are combined with plain text. This led Kay to use Smalltalk as a tool for teaching computing concepts at the elementary level.

In the summer of 2002, Kay was invited to join the computer science department in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. There, he teaches a Transpacific Interactive Distance Education (TIDE) course on user-interfaces and end-user scripting as learning environments for children. Using technology developed by UCLA's Center for Digital Innovation, TIDE courses are taught simultaneously at UCLA and Kyoto University in Japan.

"Dr. Kay is a researcher with extraordinary insights into computing and education," said Milos Ercegovac, professor and chair of UCLA's computer science department. "Our faculty and students are pleased to have Dr. Kay as an inspiring colleague and a great teacher."

As a student at the University of Utah, Kay invented dynamic object-oriented programming, and was a member of the university research team that developed continuous tone 3D graphics for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Kay is also the co-designer of the FLEX Machine, an early desktop computer with graphical user interface and object-oriented operating system, and the creator of the Dynabook, a laptop personal computer for children of all ages.

While participating in several design committees for the fledgling ARPANET project, Kay came to know UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock, who created the basic principles of packet switching, the technology underpinning the Internet and still used today.

"Back then I could see that Alan would go far and make some real contributions. He certainly more than fulfilled that prediction and I couldn't be more thrilled and gratified to see his great achievements," said Kleinrock. "It is especially nice to have him on our computer science faculty, where he is an inspiration to our faculty and students."

Kay has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and biology with minor concentrations in English and anthropology from the University of Colorado. He has a MS and PhD in computer science, both with distinction, from the University of Utah, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Kungl Tekniska Hoegskolan in Stockholm.

In February 2004, Kay won the Charles Stark Draper Prize along with three colleagues for their 1970s work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. The team, credited with creating the first practical networked personal computer, included Kay, Robert W. Taylor, Butler W. Lampson and Charles P. Thacker.

The Turing award derives its name from Dr. Alan Turing, the British mathematician who is most well known for the "Turing Machine," an abstract logic exercise that articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing. ACM is the leading organization for computing professionals, delivering resources that advance the computing and IT disciplines, enable professional development and promote policies and research that benefit society. ACM will present the Turing Award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 5 in New York.