Alfred Aho

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Alfred Aho

Born Alfred Vaino Aho

August 9, 1941 (age 79)

Timmins, Ontario, Canada

Nationality Canadian

American

 University of Toronto
Alma mater
 Princeton University

Known for  Awk programming language

 Principles of Compiler Design

 Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and

Tools

 Aho-Corasick algorithm

Awards  Bell Labs Fellow (1984)

 FAAAS (1986)

 IEEE Fellow (1988)

 FACM (1996)

 IEEE John von Neumann Medal (2003)

  NAE Member

 Turing Award (2020)

Scientific career

Fields Computer science

Institutions Columbia University

Thesis Indexed Grammars: An Extension of Context Free

Grammars (1968)

Doctoral John Hopcroft[1]

advisor

Alfred Vaino Aho (born August 9, 1941) is a Canadian computer scientist best

known for his work on programming languages, compilers, and related algorithms,
and his textbooks on the art and science of computer programming. [2][3][4] He and his
long-time collaborator Jeffrey Ullman are the recipients of the 2020 Turing Award,
generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science.[5]

Contents

 1Career
 2Teaching
 3Books
 4References
 5External links

Career[edit]
Aho received a B.A.Sc. (1963) in Engineering Physics from the University of Toronto,
then an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967) in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science
from Princeton University.[6] He conducted research at Bell Labs from 1967 to 1991,
and again from 1997 to 2002 as Vice President of the Computing Sciences
Research Center.[7] Since 1995, he has held the Lawrence Gussman Professorship
in Computer Science at Columbia University. He served as chair of the department
from 1995 to 1997, and again in the spring of 2003. [8]
In his PhD thesis Aho created indexed grammars[9] and the nested-stack
automaton[10] as vehicles for extending the power of context-free languages, but
retaining many of their decidability and closure properties. One application of
indexed grammars is modelling parallel rewriting systems, [11] particularly in biological
applications.[12]
After graduating from Princeton, Aho joined the Computing Sciences Research
Center at Bell Labs where he devised efficient regular expression and string-pattern
matching algorithms that he implemented in the first versions of
the Unix tools  egrep  and  fgrep . The  fgrep  algorithm has become known as
the Aho-Corasick algorithm; it is used by several bibliographic search-systems,
including the one developed by Margaret J. Corasick, and by other string-searching
applications.[13]
At Bell Labs, Aho worked closely with Steve Johnson and Jeffrey Ullman to develop
efficient algorithms for analyzing and translating programming languages. [14] Steve
Johnson used the bottom-up LALR parsing algorithms to create the syntax-analyzer
generator yacc,[15] and Michael E. Lesk and Eric Schmidt used Aho's regular-
expression pattern-matching algorithms to create the lexical-analyzer generator lex.
[16]
 The lex and yacc tools and their derivatives have been used to develop the front
ends of many of today's programming language compilers. [17]
Aho and Ullman wrote a series of textbooks on compiling techniques that codified
the theory relevant to compiler design. Their 1977 textbook Principles of Compiler
Design had a green dragon on the front cover and became known as "the green
dragon book". In 1986 Aho and Ullman were joined by Ravi Sethi to create a new
edition, "the red dragon book" (which was briefly shown in the 1995 movie
"Hackers"), and in 2007 also by Monica Lam to create "the purple dragon book". The
dragon books are used for university courses as well as industry references. [18]
In 1974, Aho, John Hopcroft, and Ullman wrote the Design and Analysis of
Computer Algorithms, codifying some of their early research on algorithms. This
book became one of the most highly cited books in computer science for several
decades and helped to stimulate the creation of algorithms and data structures as a
central course in the computer science curriculum.[19]
Aho is also widely known for his co-authorship of the AWK programming
language with Peter J. Weinberger and Brian Kernighan (the "A" stands for "Aho").
[20]
 As of 2010 Aho's research interests include programming languages, compilers,
algorithms, and quantum computing. He is part of the Language and Compilers
research-group at Columbia University. [21]
Overall, his works have been cited 81,040 times and he has an h-index of 66, as of
May 8, 2019.[22]
Aho has received many prestigious honors, including the IEEE's John von Neumann
Medal and membership in the National Academy of Engineering. He was elected a
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.[23] He holds honorary
doctorates from the University of Waterloo,[24] from the University of Helsinki,[24] and
from the University of Toronto.[25] He is a Fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, ACM, Bell Labs, and IEEE.[19]
Aho has twice served as chair of the Advisory Committee for the Computer and
Information Science and Engineering Directorate of the National Science
Foundation. He is a past president of the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms
and Computability Theory.[26] Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman were co-recipients of the
2017 C&C Prize awarded by NEC Corporation.[27] He and Ullman were named
recipients of 2020 Turing Award on March 31, 2021.[5]

Teaching[edit]
Aho has taught at Columbia University in New York City since 1995. He won the
Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates in 2003. [28]

Books[edit]
 A. V. Aho and J. D. Ullman, The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and
Compiling, Vol. 1, Parsing. Prentice Hall, 1972. ISBN 0-13-914556-7
 A. V. Aho (ed.) Currents in the Theory of Computing. Prentice Hall,
1973. ISBN 0-13-195651-5[29]
 A. V. Aho and J. D. Ullman, The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and
Compiling, Vol. 2, Compiling. Prentice-Hall, 1973. ISBN 978-0-13-914564-
3
 A. V. Aho, J. E. Hopcroft, J. D. Ullman, The Design and Analysis of
Computer Algorithms. Addison-Wesley, 1974. ISBN 0-201-00023-7
 A. V. Aho and J. D. Ullman, Principles of C