[SCC_Active_Members] Ken Kennedy at Rice U. dead at 61

[Randall Neff]

Ken Kennedy was the John and Ann Doerr University Professor of
Computational Engineering in the Computer Science Department at Rice
University, where he directs the Center for High Performance Software
Research (HiPerSoft).

On a personal note:
I was one of Ken's first students in compilers when he arrived at Rice in 1971,
fresh out of NYU, only five years older. He was already an expert on compiler
optimization for FORTRAN and passed the algorithms onto his students.
Basic blocks, anyone?
Julie and I attended several parties at his condo.
In 1984, he founded the Computer Science Department at Rice; previously
courses were Math Science and/or Electrical Engineering.
In 1997, John and Ann Doerr endowed a professorship chair for him.

He was scheduled as a speaker at the forthcoming HOPL III conference on
"The rise and fall of High Performance Fortran: an historical object lesson"


Long article at Rice
http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=9268


>From ACM TechNews:
 Rice Computing Pioneer Ken Kennedy Dead at 61
Rice University Press Release (02/07/07)

Computing pioneer Ken Kennedy, the founder of Rice University's
computer science program and an ACM Fellow, died Feb. 7, after a long
bout with cancer. In a 36-year career, Kennedy is credited with making
Rice one of the country's leading centers for computational research
and education. He founded Rice University's Department of Computer
Science Department in 1984, its cross-disciplinary Computer and
Information Technology Institute (CITI) in 1987, its Center for
Research on Parallel Computing in (CRPC) 1989, and its Center for
Higher Performance Software Research (HiPerSoft) in 2000. "Ken Kennedy
early on realized the power of computers to address real problems that
confront people and the Earth," said Rice President David Leebron. In
1997, Kennedy was asked to be co-chair of the President's Information
Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), which urged government leaders
to boost computing spending by over $1 billion, and provided the spark
for increased research support from many government agencies. Kennedy
earned "enormous respect [from] his colleagues around the world ...
For his abilities, his professional accomplishments, and his
humanity," said Rice Physicist Neal Lane, who served as NSF director
and then White House science advisor during Kennedy's PITAC tenure.
Aside from taking part in countless panels at Rice, he was known for
his willingness to work alongside students, specifically in the effort
to pull the coaxial cable for the campus's first LAN. Kennedy received
the ACM Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, which was "particularly
significant to him because it was an award from the community where he
got his start," said Keith Cooper, Rice Department of Computer Science
chair, and a former Ph.D. student of Kennedy's. In 1999, when the ACM
SIGPLAN listed the 50 most influential papers of the last 20 years,
Kennedy had five of them and three of his former students had at least
two. "It is fair to say that no one in the last 35 years has had as
much influence on the field of programming-language implementation as
Ken," said CITI Director Moshe Vardi. He is also remembered for his
work in making supercomputers more accessible for scientists and
engineers.