Jeffrey D. Ullman : An Oral History
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Jeffrey Ullman, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford, provides insights about the birth and evolution of the field of computer science from the 1960s to today. He reflects upon his early life and education, his faculty career at Princeton and Stanford, and his research contributions to database theory, information integration, algorithm optimization, compilers, and more. Topics of special interest include his early experiences with computers, his work at Bell Labs and collaboration with Al Aho, the Datalog query language, and change over time in the Stanford Department of Computer Science.
- Summary
- Thoughts on life during COVID • Early life in Astoria, New York • Family members • Father’s education and job in advertising • Mother’s education and work • Grandparents • Memories of living in California for a short time as a child • Family’s move to Long Island and the postwar suburban public schools there • Activities as a child and teenager • Van Buren High School • Memories of mathematics teacher, Ira Ewen • Competing on the high school math team and math coach Sidney Cabin • Father’s involvement in WWII • Parents’ expectations and his own view of life • Summer job during college as a junior actuary at Mutual of Omaha and his first exposure to computers • Writing programs using pins and boards • Summer job at Brookhaven National Laboratory • Learning Fortran and programming an IBM 7090 with FAP assembly language • Saturday enrichment program at Columbia University during high school • Birth of Columbia’s 4-year engineering program • Student life and humanities classes at Columbia • Story of poet Kenneth Koch embarrassing Ullman in class about his writing • Engineering mathematics curriculum • Taking a class in coding theory taught by IBM’s Bob Chien • Vladimir Levenshtein’s similar work on bit deletion coding problems in Russia • Ullman’s work process • Need for new coding techniques with advent of barcode scanners, et cetera; job in Bob Chien’s lab at IBM in Yorktown Heights after first year of graduate school and results of subsequent research • Decision to attend graduate school in electrical engineering at Princeton • National Science Foundation Fellowship • Description of Department of Electrical Engineering and Digital Systems Group at Princeton • Memories of Alonzo Church’s logic course • Dissertation work • Reflections on changing expectations for graduate students • Working with Seymour Ginsburg at Systems Development Corporation (SDC) • Learning automata theory and mathematical rigor • Context-free grammars and automatic parsing • Yacc • Job at Bell Labs after graduate school • Importance of conferences over publishing papers in computer science • Computer Science Center at Bell Labs in Murray Hill • “Traveling salesman” problem • Hopcroft at Bell Labs as visitor • Leaving Bell Labs for academia • Meeting wife Holly through Operation Match, an early computerized dating service • Holly’s job as an editor for True Story • Starting work as an associate professor at Princeton • Promoting computer science within the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton • Projects and career paths of his early graduate students, including Ravi Sethi and Matt Hecht • Important computer science conferences in the 1970s • Computer science track for undergraduates at Princeton • Parsing of programming languages with Al Aho at Bell Labs • Working on code optimization • Brad Edelberg and early relational database theory • Thoughts on compilers, including work and books with Aho • Easy access to NSF research funding for computer science in 1970s • Frustration with departmental politics at Princeton and decision to move to Stanford • Impact on family; housing in Palo Alto • Culture of Stanford Department of Computer Science in the 1970s compared to other schools • Starting Database Group/InfoLab with Hector Garcia-Molina, Jennifer Widom, and Gio Wiederhold • Interaction between Computer Science and other Stanford departments • Involvement with social science undergraduates in 2020 in “Bridging Policy and Tech through Design” • Thoughts on design thinking • Department’s move from School of Humanities & Sciences to the School of Engineering and role of Jim Gibbons in the shift • Building the undergraduate computer science major • Strategies for dealing with an influx of computer science majors, including hiring top-notch lecturers, automating grading, and recording and broadcasting lectures • Creating and utilizing Gradiance, a computer science homework grading application • Memories of serving as department chair in early 1990s, including handling budget cuts and the Stu Reges controversy • Work on database theory • Development of Datalog query language with ability for recursive queries • Acyclic queries; bars and beers example • Information integration and TSIMMIS (The Stanford-IBM Manager of Multiple Information Sources) • Real world data integration • Web integration company Junglee; its purchase by Amazon • Example of how data integration tools worked at that time • Data cube design and examples • Test of Time award • MIDAS (Mining Data at Stanford) • Data science and big data • Optimizing data mining queries • Inner workings of PageRank algorithm compared to AltaVista • Incident involving web crawling • ACM SIGMOD (Special Interest Group on Management of Data) Conference and PODS (Principles of Database Systems Conferences • XP1 (ex- Princetonians) and XP2 Conferences • Publication Ullman is most proud of • Some influential publications: Datalog paper, work on optimizing algorithms with MapReduce • Foundations of Computer Science textbook; similarity between computer science theory and mathematics; thoughts on book publishing more generally • New York State group to review computer science PhD programs • Designing GRE exam questions • Involvement with MITACS (Mathematics Information Technology and Complex Systems) • NICTA (National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Ltd) • Thoughts on translating innovation into commercial success; example of verified L4 kernel • Reflections on quantum computing and artificial intelligence
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Extent | 1 text file |
| Place | Stanford (Calif.) |
| Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
| Date created | May 13, 2020 - 2020-05-18 |
| Language | English |
| Digital origin | born digital |
Creators/Contributors
| Interviewee | Ullman, Jeffrey D., 1942- | |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | Ullman, Jeffrey D., 1942- | |
| Interviewer | Marine-Street, Natalie J. | |
| Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Subjects
| Subject | Ullman, Jeffrey D., 1942- |
|---|---|
| Subject | Stanford University. Computer Science Department |
| Subject | Computer science |
| Genre | Interview |
Bibliographic information
| Biographical Profile | Jeff Ullman is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering (Emeritus) in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford and CEO of Gradiance Corp. He received the BS degree from Columbia University in 1963 and the PhD from Princeton in 1966. Prior to his appointment at Stanford in 1979, he was a member of the technical staff of Bell Laboratories from 1966 to 1969, and on the faculty of Princeton University between 1969 and 1979. From 1990 to 1994, he was chair of the Stanford Computer Science Department. Ullman was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, and has held Guggenheim and Einstein Fellowships. He has received the Sigmod Contributions Award (1996), the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award (1998), the Knuth Prize (2000), the Sigmod E. F. Codd Innovations award (2006), the IEEE von Neumann medal (2010), and the NEC C&C Foundation Prize (2017). He is the author of sixteen books, including books on database systems, compilers, automata theory, and algorithms. |
|---|---|
| Audio |
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| Finding Aid | |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/cg099yd5865 |
| Location | SC0932 |
| Repository | Stanford University. Libraries. Department of Special Collections and University Archives |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Collection
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program interviews, 1999-2022
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