Lambert Meertens
Lambert Guillaume Louis Théodore Meertens or L.G.L.T. Meertens (born 10 May 1944, in Amsterdam) is a Dutch computer scientist and professor.[1] He is currently a researcher at the Kestrel Institute, a nonprofit computer science research center in Palo Alto's Stanford Research Park.[2]
Lambert Meertens | |
---|---|
Born | Amsterdam, Netherlands | 10 May 1944
Nationality | Dutch |
Occupation | Computer scientist |
Known for | ABC, Bird–Meertens formalism, |
Life and career
As a student at the Ignatius Gymnasium in Amsterdam, Meertens designed a computer with Kees Koster, a classmate.[3] In the 1960s, Meertens applied affix grammars to the description and composition of music, and obtained a special prize from the jury at the 1968 International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Congress in Edinburgh for his computer-generated string quartet, "Quartet No. 1 in C Major for 2 Violins, Viola and Violoncello", based on the first non-context-free affix grammar.[4][5] The string quartet was published as Mathematical Centre Report MR 96 in 1968.
Meertens was one of the editors of the Revised ALGOL 68 Report.[6] He was the originator and one of the designers of the ABC programming language. He was chairman of the Dutch Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP) from 1975 until 1981. He was co-designer of the Bird–Meertens formalism, along with Richard Bird, who also "gifted" him the Meertens number.[7] From 1999 to 2009, he chaired the IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi.
His original work was at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is a Professor Emeritus at Utrecht University in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He currently works as a researcher at the Kestrel Institute in Palo Alto.
Awards
- 2007: International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Silver Core[8][2]
- 2015: IFIP Outstanding Service Award
References
- Prof.dr. L.G.L.Th. Meertens (1944 - ) at the Catalogus Professorum Academiæ Rheno-Traiectinæ
- "Prof. Lambert Meertens". Kestrel Institute. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
- Rooijendijk, Cordula (2007), Alles moest nog worden uitgevonden (in Dutch), Atlas
- Kassler, Michael (1969). "Report from Edinburgh". Perspectives of New Music. 7 (2): 175–177. doi:10.2307/832302. JSTOR 832302..
- Quartet no. 1 in c major for 2 violins, viola and violoncello. Score and links to mp3 sound files of a performance by the Amsterdam String Quartet (1968).
- van Wijngaarden, Adriaan; Mailloux, Barry James; Peck, John Edward Lancelot; Koster, Cornelis Hermanus Antonius; Sintzoff, Michel; Lindsey, Charles Hodgson; Meertens, Lambert Guillaume Louis Théodore; Fisker, Richard G., eds. (1976). Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 68 (PDF). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-0-387-07592-1. OCLC 1991170. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-04-19. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
- Bird, Richard S. (1998). "Meertens number". Journal of Functional Programming. 8 (1): 83–88. doi:10.1017/S0956796897002931.
- "Holders of the IFIP Silver Core Award (1974–2007)" (PDF). Griffith University. Retrieved 2018-01-22.