Bertrand Meyer (born 1950 in France) is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language.
Education and academic career
Bertrand Meyer received the equivalent of a
bachelor's degree in engineering from the
École polytechnique in
Paris, a
master's degree from
Stanford University, and a
PhD from the
Université de Nancy in
Nancy, France. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at
Électricité de France, and for three years was on the faculty at the
University of California, Santa Barbara.
Since October 2001, he has been Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he pursues research on building trusted components (reusable software elements) with a guaranteed level of quality.
His other activities include being adjunct professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (1998–2003) and membership of the French Academy of Technologies. He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker. As former head of the ETH Computer Science department, he is one of the founders and the current president of Informatics Europe, the association of European computer science departments.
Computer languages
Meyer pursues the ideal of simple, elegant and user-friendly computer languages and is one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of
object-oriented programming (OOP). His book
Object-Oriented Software Construction is widely considered to be the best work on presenting the case for OOP. Other books he has written include
Eiffel: The Language (a description of the Eiffel language),
Object Success (a discussion of object technology for managers),
Reusable Software (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions),
Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages and
Touch of Class. He has authored numerous articles and edited conference proceedings.
He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution, and is the originator of the Design by Contract development method.
His experiences with object technology through the Simula language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification (including the Z notation), provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel. Eiffel has been influential in the development of other languages including Java, C# and Python.
In 2005, Meyer was the "senior award" winner of the first AITO Dahl-Nygaard award. This prize, named after the two creators of object technology, is awarded annually to a senior and a junior researchers who have made significant technical contributions to the field of Object Orientation.
In 2006, Meyer was recognized as honorary doctor of Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics.
On 9 June 2007, Meyer received the Software System Award of the ACM for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel. He is a 2008 Fellow of the ACM.
Wikipedia hoax
On 28 December 2005, an anonymous user falsely announced Meyer's death on
German Wikipedia's biography of Meyer. The hoax was reported five days later by the
Heise News Ticker and the article was immediately corrected. Many major news media outlets in Germany and Switzerland picked up the story, creating the German Wikipedia's version of the
Seigenthaler incident. Meyer went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, concluding "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."
See also
Object-Oriented Software Construction
Eiffel programming language
Uniform access principle
References
External links
Bertrand Meyer home page
Bertrand Meyer's technology blog
DBLP Bibliography
The people behind Eiffel web page
A review of Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd edition'' by Tal Cohen
Critique of Meyer's "Object-Oriented Software Construction" Book
How to pronounce his name in English
Defense and illustration of Wikipedia, by Bertrand Meyer
Category:1950 births
Category:Living people
Category:Alumni of the École Polytechnique
Category:ETH Zurich faculty
Category:Formal methods people
Category:Monash University faculty
Category:French computer scientists
Category:Software engineering researchers
Category:Programming language designers
Category:Programming language researchers
Category:Stanford University alumni
Category:University of California, Santa Barbara faculty
Category:Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Category:Computer science writers
