Adele Goldberg (computer Scientist)

Adele Goldberg (computer Scientist)

Adele Goldberg (born July 22, 1945) is a computer scientist who participated in the development of the programming language Smalltalk-80 and various concepts related to object oriented programming while a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, in the 1970s.

Goldberg began working at PARC in 1973, and eventually became manager of the System Concepts Laboratory where she, Alan Kay, and others developed Smalltalk-80. Goldberg and Kay also were involved in the development of design templates, forerunners of the design patterns commonly used in software design. In 1988 Goldberg left PARC to co-found ParcPlace Systems, a company that created development tools for Smalltalk-based applications.

She served as president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 1984 to 1986, and, together with Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls, received the ACM Software Systems Award in 1987. She also received PC Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. In 1994 she was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Many of the concepts developed by Goldberg and her team at PARC became the basis for graphically based user interfaces, replacing the earlier command line based systems. According to Goldberg, Steve Jobs demanded a demonstration of the Smalltalk System, which she refused to give him. Her superiors eventually ordered her to, at which point she complied, satisfied that the decision to "give away the kitchen sink" to Jobs and his team was then their responsibility. Apple eventually used many of the ideas in the Alto and their implementations as the basis for their Macintosh desktop.

In 1988, Goldberg co-founded ParcPlace Systems, a Smalltalk-80 licensee, as chairwoman and CEO, serving as chairwoman until its 1995 merger with Digitalk.

She cofounded, and is currently working at Neometron, Inc., of Palo Alto, California. She works at Bullitics.

Goldberg was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and a master's degree in information science from the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in information science from the University of Chicago in 1973. She also served as a visiting researcher at Stanford University.