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To mark the occasion of Professor Dijkstra's retirement in November 1999 from the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences, which he had occupied since 1984, and to celebrate his forty-plus years of seminal contributions to computing science, the Department of Computer Sciences organized a symposium which took place on his birthday in May 2000; its program (10 MB) contains an outline of Edsger's career, as well as a collection of quotes culled from his writings, from his blackboard, and from what others have said about him. Like most of us, Edsger always believed it a scientist's duty to maintain a lively correspondence with his scientific colleagues. To a greater extent than most of us, he put that conviction into practice. For over four decades, he mailed copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, and pungent commentaries, known collectively as "EWDs", to several dozen recipients in academia and industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier and the wide interest in Edsger's writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands. Although most of Edsger's publications began life as EWD manuscripts, the great majority of his manuscripts remain unpublished. They have been inaccessible to many potential readers, and those who have received copies have been unable to cite them in their own work. To alleviate both of these problems, the department has collected over a thousand of the manuscripts in this permanent web site, in the form of PDF bitmap documents (to read them, you'll need a copy of Acrobat Reader). We hope you will find it convenient, useful, inspiring, and enjoyable. In addition to the manuscripts, you may enjoy a 25-minute video visit with Edsger, filmed in autumn 2000. |
Each manuscript file is accessible through either of two indexes: 0. BibTeX index. Each entry includes all the available bibliographic data. 1. Ad-hoc indexes. These contain titles only, but are faster if you know what you're looking for.
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Recent additions
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SearchYou can search for words and phrases in the manuscripts that have been transcribed (sorry, the PDF image files can't be searched). Simple search: The search facility is provided free of charge by Master.com. |
TranscriptionsA group of volunteers is undertaking to transcribe the EWDs to simple HTML files, in order to make them both searchable and accessible to the visually impaired. The transcriptions completed so far, and those in progress, are indexed here. If you might be interested in lending a hand in this effort, please read this. |
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