Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup, a TEES Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, won the 2015 AITO Dahl-Nygaard Senior Prize for the design, implementation and evolution of the C++ programming language. This prize is considered the most prestigious in object-oriented computer science.
Stroustrup is currently the managing director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City, a Distinguished Research Professor in Computer Science at Texas A&M, and a visiting professor in computer science at Columbia University. His research interests include distributed systems, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages. He is actively involved in the ANSI/ISO standardization of C++.
For about 20 years, C++ has been among the most widely used programming languages. Using C++ as his tool, Stroustrup has pioneered the use of object-oriented and generic programming techniques in application areas where efficiency is a premium; examples include general systems programming, switching, simulation, graphics, user-interfaces, embedded systems, and scientific computation. During his teaching years at Texas A&M, Stroustrup wrote his famous programming textbook, Programming — Principles and Practice using C++. The second edition was released in May 2014. Stroustrup has published seven books and more than 100 academic and more popular papers.
Among his numerous awards and honors are the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Entrepreneur Award, ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award and the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award. Stroustrup is an ACM Fellow, AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, AT&T Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and a member of The National Academy of Engineering, and the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science. He also holds an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science from The National Research University, ITMO, St. Petersburg, Russia.
The AITO (Association Internationale pour les Technologies Objects) Dahl-Nygaard Prizes are named for Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard, whose work on object-oriented programming led to the creation of the Simlula language—one of the most important inventions in software engineering. In 2004, AITO established two prizes to be awarded annually to a senior and a younger researcher who have demonstrated their potential to follow in the footsteps of Dahl and Nygaard. The 2015 Junior Prize was awarded to Alexander J. Summers for his work on the verification of object-oriented programs and type systems.