Biography
Gelernter received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in classical Hebrew literature from Yale University in 1976 and his Ph.D. from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook in 1982.
In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system. Bill Joy cites Linda as the inspiration for many elements of JavaSpaces and Jini.
In 1993, Gelernter was critically injured opening a mailbomb sent by the Unabomber. He recovered from his injuries but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged. He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber.
He helped found the company Mirror Worlds Technologies, which in 2001 released Scopeware software using ideas from his 1992 book Mirror Worlds. Gelernter believed that computers can free users from being filing clerks by organizing their data. The company announced it would "cease operations effective May 15, 2004". A related company Mirror Worlds, LLC recently had their patent infringement verdict against Apple, Inc. overturned in the Eastern District of Texas.
In 2003, he was nominated to and became a member of the National Council on the Arts. In 2006, Gelernter joined the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.
Gelernter contributes to magazines such as City Journal, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary which are generally considered neoconservative. For seven months, he contributed a weekly op-ed column to the LA Times.
Read more about this topic: David Gelernter
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