Thomas eugene kurtz biography books
Thomas E. Kurtz
Born February 22, 1928, Oak Park, Ill.; with John Kemeny, developer of the programming language and system BASIC.
Education: BA, Knox College, 1950; PhD, mathematics/statistics, Princeton University, 1956.
Professional Experience: Dartmouth College: instructor, mathematics, 1956-1958, assistant professor, 1958-1963, associate professor, 1963-1966; professor, 1966-1993, director, Computing Center, 1959-1975, director, Kiewit Computation Center, 1966-1975, director, Office of Academic Computing, 1975-1978, vice chair and chair, Program in Computing and Information Science, 1979-1988; member, Pierce Panel, President's Science Advisory Council in Higher Education, 1965-1967; chairman, Council, EDUCOM, 1973-1974.
Honors and Awards: AFIPS Pioneer Award, 1974; DSc (Hon.), Knox College, 1987; IEEE Computer Science Pioneer Award, 1991.
Kurtz received his PhD in statistics from Princeton in 1956, his first contact with computing having occurred in 1951 at the summer session of the Institute for Numerical Analysis (INA) at UCLA in the summer of 1951. He joined the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department (chaired by John G. Kemeny) in 1956 as an instructor. Besides teaching statistics and numerical analysis, he served as the Dartmouth contact to the New England Regional Computer Center (NERComP), which was supported in part by IBM at MIT. In 1959 Dartmouth obtained an LGP-30 computer, and Kurtz became the first director of Dartmouth's computing center.
Around 1962, Kurtz and John G. Kemeny began jointly to supervise the design and development of a time-sharing system for university use. The idea to use time-sharing to reach all Dartmouth students came from John McCarthy who, around 1961, advised, "you guys ought to do time-sharing." This effort culminated in 1964 in the first Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS). Although other languages such as Fortran and Algol were provided, the principal language was BASIC, which was deliberately
Kurtz, Thomas Eugene, b. 1928
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Dates
Biography
Thomas Eugene Kurtz was born February 22, 1928. He graduated from Knox College in 1950, and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1956. He joined the faculty at Dartmouth College as professor of mathematics the same year. In 1963, he co-designed with G. Kemeny the first computer language known as BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for Dartmouth’s experimental time-sharing system (DTSS). From 1966-1975, he served as Director of Kiewit Computation Center at Dartmouth and from 1975-1978 ,he was the Director of Academic Computing. In 1980,he became the Director of Computer and Information Systems program at Dartmouth, a groundbreaking multidisciplinary graduate program. He held this position until 1988, after which he returned to teaching full-time as a professor of mathematics with an emphasis on statistics and computer science. He also served as the Council Chairman and Trustee to EDUCOM and NERComP, as well as on the Pierce Panel of the Presidents’ Scientific Advisory Committee. In 1991, he received the Computer Pioneer Award and in 1994, was inducted as a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery.
Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:
Oral history interview with Thomas Kurtz
Collection
Identifier: DOH-14
DOH-14
Date(s): 2002-06-20 to 2002-07-02
The oral history interview of Thomas Kutz is comprised of audiocassette recordings and an indexed transcript of the recordings. The interview was conducted by Daniel L. Daily during June and July 2002. The entire interview runs for approximately three and a half hours and covers his career at Dartmouth under four presidents. Interviewed by Daniel L. Daily on 2 occasions during June and July 2002 in Hanover, N.H.
Thomas Kurtz papers
Collection
Identifier: MS-1144
MS-1144
Date(s): 1954 to 2002
Thomas E. Kurtz
American computer scientist and educator (1928–2024)
Thomas Eugene Kurtz (February 22, 1928 – November 12, 2024) was an American computer scientist and educator. A Dartmouth professor of mathematics, he and colleague John G. Kemeny are best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System in 1963 and 1964. These innovations made computing more accessible by simplifying programming for non-experts and allowing multiple users to share a single computer, transforming how computers were used in education and research.
For his role in creating BASIC, the IEEE honored Kurtz in 1991 with the Computer Pioneer Award, and in 1994, he was inducted as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Early life and education
Thomas Kurtz was born on February 22, 1928, in Oak Park, Illinois, United States, to Helen Bell Kurtz and Oscar Christ Kurtz. His father, a German-American, worked for the Lions Clubs International headquarters, holding various roles. From an early age, Kurtz developed an interest in science.
Kurtz enrolled at Knox College and developed an interest in mathematics, eventually taking every offered course in the subject. Encouraged by his advisor to pursue a career in statistics, he switched his major to mathematics during his senior year. Kurtz graduated from Knox College in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics.
His first experience with computing came in 1951 at the Summer Session of the Institute for Numerical Analysis at University of California, Los Angeles. Kurtz went on to acquire his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1956. His thesis was on a problem of multiple comparisons in mathematical statistics, and his advisor was John Tukey. Kurtz's mathematical interests included numerical analysis, statistics, and computer science.
Career
In 1956, he was recruited to D .