Dr.
Leslie Lamport (born February 7, 1941 in New York City) is an American
computer scientist. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he
received a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from
Brandeis University, respectively in 1963 and 1972.[1] His
dissertation was about singularities in analytic partial differential
equations.[2] Lamport is best known for his seminal work in
distributed systems and as the initial developer of the document
preparation system LaTeX.[3]
Professionally, Lamport worked as a computer scientist at
Massachusetts Computer Associates, SRI International, Digital
Equipment Corporation, and Compaq. In 2001 he joined Microsoft
Research at Mountain View, California.[1]
Lamport’s research contributions have laid the foundations of the
theory of distributed systems. Among his most notable papers are
“Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System”,[4]
which received the PODC Influential Paper Award in 2000,[5]
“The Byzantine Generals Problem”,[6]
“Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of a Distributed
System”[7] and
“The Part-Time Parliament”.[8]
These papers relate to such concepts as logical clocks (and the
happened-before relationship) and Byzantine failures. They are among
the most cited papers in the field of computer science[9] and describe
algorithms to solve many fundamental problems in distributed systems,
including:
the Paxos algorithm for consensus,
the bakery algorithm for mutual exclusion of multiple threads in a
computer system that require the same resources at the same time and
the snapshot algorithm for the determination of consistent global
states.
Lamport is also known for his work on temporal logic, where he
introduced the temporal logic of actions (TLA).[10][11] Among his more
recent contributions is TLA+, a logic for specifying and reasoning
about concurrent and reactive systems, that he describes in the book
“Specifying Systems: The TLA+ Language and Tools for Hardware and
Software Engineers”[12] and defines as a “quixotic attempt to overcome
engineers' antipathy towards mathematics”.[13]
Lamport received four honorary doctorates from European universities:
University of Rennes and Christian Albrechts University of Kiel in
2003, EPFL in 2004 and University of Lugano in 2006.[1] In 2004, he
received the IEEE Piore Award.[14] In 2005, the paper “Reaching
Agreement in the Presence of Faults”[15] received the Dijkstra
Prize.[16]
Lamport is the author of the aphorism:[17]
“
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you
didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.”
See also
Lamport signature - The Lamport one-time signature scheme is a method
for constructing a digital signature.
S/KEY - a one-time password system sometimes referred to as Lamport's
scheme |