M. Douglas McIlroy
Bell Laboratories, Room 2C-526
Murray Hill, NJ 07974
(908)582-6050
doug@research.bell-labs.com
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/doug

Currently Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the Computing
Sciences Research Center at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now
Lucent Technologies), M. Douglas McIlroy was head of the Computing
Techniques Research Department from 1965 to 1986, at which time he
returned at his own request to full-time research.  Best known as the
birthplace of the UNIX operating system, that department has done wide
ranging theoretical and applied research in programming languages and
compilers, operating systems, design verification, algorithms and
computational complexity, text processing, graphics and image
processing, and computer security.

In the area of computer languages, Dr. McIlroy participated in the
design of PL/I, contributed to C++, and has written unusual compilers
for Lisp, ALTRAN (an algebraic manipulation system), PL/I, and TMG (a
compiler-compiler).  Long interested in stream processing, he
conceived "pipes" as realized in the UNIX operating system and
invented the classic coroutine prime-number sieve.  Other research
topics include text and string processing, computer cartography,
theorem proving, and dynamic storage allocation.  The notions of
"language extension" arose from his early work in macroprocessors, and
"software components" from a 1968 NATO paper.  In a lighter vein, he
coauthored Darwin, the first game of survival among self-reproducing
programs.  His recent research has addressed multilevel security for
UNIX and ultimately accurate bitmap graphics.

He participated in the design and construction of the Multics
operating system.  To Unix he contributed many utilities and
subroutines, ranging from the lowly "echo", through "diff" for file
comparison, "spell" for checking spelling, and "join" for database
manipulation, to "speak", the first real-time text-to-speech program.

Dr. McIlroy joined Bell Laboratories in 1958 after earning a
bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University and a
PhD in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.  He taught at MIT from 1954 to 1958, and was a visiting
lecturer at Oxford University from 1967 to 1968.

He has served the Association for Computing Machinery as national
lecturer, Turing award chairman, member of the publications planning
committee, and associate editor for Communications, Journal, and
Transactions.  He has served on the executive committee of CSNET (an
evolutionary stage between the exclusive ARPANET and the public
Internet), on various advisory panels to Department of Energy,
Department of Defense, New Jersey Board of Higher Education, and
National Science Foundation.  He was an author of influential National
Research Council reports on computer security ("Computers at Risk",
1991) and directions for academic computer science ("Computing the
Future", 1992).  He is Vice president of the New York Map Society, a
founding member of WG2.3, the International Federation of Information
Processing Societies working group on programming methodology, and a
fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In his home town of Bernardsville, New Jersey, Mr. McIlroy has been
chairman of the shade tree commission, chairman of the environmental
commission and member of the planning board.  He is now a trustee of
the public library.

12/31/96