William Wulf

William Allan Wulf (born December 8, 1939) is a computer scientist notable for his work in programming languages and compilers. Until June 2012, he was a University Professor and the AT&T Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia.

Born in Chicago, he attended the University of Illinois, receiving a BS in Engineering Physics in 1961 and an MS in Electrical Engineering in 1963. He then achieved the first Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia in 1968.

In 1970, while at Carnegie Mellon University, he designed the BLISS programming language and developed a groundbreaking optimizing compiler for it.

With his wife Anita K. Jones, Wulf was a founder and vice president of Tartan Laboratories, a compiler technology company, in 1981.

He served as president of the National Academy of Engineering from 1996 to 2007. He chaired the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council from 1992-1996. He serves on the Council of the ACM, on the board of directors of CRDF Global, and is a reviewing editor of Science. In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM.

Wulf's research has also included computer architecture, computer security, and hardware-software codesign.

William Wulf is married to Anita K. Jones, also a past professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia, and they live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

William Wulf ended his career at the University of Virginia by resigning on Tuesday, June 19, 2012. The reasons for his resignation began with the resignation of former President Teresa A. Sullivan, in what he calls, "the worst example of corporate governance I have ever seen.

• Wulf, W. A., "Programming Without the GOTO," Proceedings of the Internationale Federation of Information Processing, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, August 1971.
• Wulf, W. A., et al., "Reflections on a Systems Programming Language," Proceedings of the SIGPLAN Symposium on System Implementation Languages, Purdue University, October 1971.
• McCredie, J., Wulf, W. A., "The Selection of a Computing Alternative," Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Conference, IEEE, Boston, September 1971.
• Wulf, W. A., "A Case Against the GOTO," Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, ACM, Boston, August 1972.
• Wulf, W. A., and Shaw, M., "Global Variables Considered Harmful," SIGPLAN Notices 8(2), February 1973.
• Wulf, W. A., Shaw, M., Hilfinger, P. N., and Flon, L., Fundamental Structures of Computer Science Addison-Wesley, 1980.
• Wulf, W. A., Johnson, R., Weinstock, C., Hobbs, S., and Geschke, C., The Design of an Optimizing Compiler American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1975.
• Shaw, M. and Wulf, W., "Tyrannical Languages Still Preempt System Design", Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Languages, April 1992.