Jacob T. Schwartz

Who was Jacob T. Schwartz?

Jacob Theodore "Jack" Schwartz was an American mathematician, computer scientist, and professor of computer science at the New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He was the designer of the SETL programming language and the NYU Ultracomputer. He founded the New York University Department of Computer Science, chairing it from 1964 to 1980.

He received his B.S. from the City College of New York and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1976, and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000.

His research interests included: the theory of linear operators, von Neumann algebras, quantum field theory, time-sharing, parallel computing, programming language design and implementation, robotics, set-theoretic approaches in computational logic, proof and program verification systems; multimedia authoring tools; experimental studies of visual perception; multimedia and other high-level software techniques for analysis and visualization of bioinformatic data.

He authored 18 books and more than 100 papers and technical reports.