Andrew Koenig (programmer) - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Koenig was born in New York City, and is the son of the physicist, Dr. Seymour H. Koenig, a former director of the IBM Watson Laboratory, and Harriet Koenig, an author and collector of Native American Indian art.

He graduated from the The Bronx High School of Science in 1968 and went on to receive a BS and MS degree from Columbia University in New York. He was a prominent member of the Columbia University Center for Computing Activities (CUCCA) in the late 1960s and 1970s. He wrote the first e-mail program used at the university.

In 1977, he joined the technical staff of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, from which he later retired.

The first book he authored, in 1987, C Traps and Pitfalls, had been motivated by his prior paper and work, mostly as a staff member at Columbia University, on a different computer language, PL/I. In 1977, as a recently hired staff member at Bell Labs, he presented a paper called "PL/I Traps and Pitfalls" at a SHARE meeting in Washington, DC.