Cliff Shaw

For the Canadian football player, see Cliff Shaw (Canadian football).
John Clifford Shaw
Born(1922-02-23)February 23, 1922
DiedFebruary 9, 1991(1991-02-09) (aged 68)
OccupationSystems programmer
Years active1950s–1990s
Known forLogic Theorist, General Problem Solver, Information Processing Language, Linked list

John Clifford Shaw (February 23, 1922 – February 9, 1991)[1] was a systems programmer at the RAND Corporation. He is a coauthor of the first artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist, and was one of the developers of General Problem Solver (universal problem solver machine) and Information Processing Language (a programming language of the 1950s). Information Processing Language is considered the true "father" of the JOSS language.[2] One of the most significant events that occurred in the programming was the development of the concept of list processing by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon and Cliff Shaw during the development of the language IPL-V.[3] He invented the linked list,[4] which remains fundamental in many strands of modern computing technology.

  1. ^ "John Clifford Shaw Papers" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 2, 2012. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
  2. ^ Wexelblat, Richard L., ed. (1981). History of Programming Languages. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-745040-8.
  3. ^ Sammet, Jean E. (1969). Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-729988-5.
  4. ^ Newell, A; Shaw, J. C. (1957). "Programming the Logic Theory Machine". Papers Presented at the February 26-28, 1957, Western Joint Computer Conference: Techniques for Reliability: 230–240. doi:10.1145/1455567.1455606.