Blog: David Loshin

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Appreciation: Stephen Warshall

Last week, Stephen Warshall, a legendary figure in the field of computer science, passed away at his home in Gloucester, MA. Anyone who has taken a college course in algorithms will be aware of Steve Warshall's contribution to the field during its early days, as he is responsible for developing an efficient algorithm for finding the shortest path between two nodes in a network. Anyone who has followed some of my articles and blog entries will see how these kinds of algorithms are essential for BI techniques for social network and link analysis.

Early in my career I was lucky enough to meet Steve at my first employer, Massachusetts Computer Associates (also known as Compass). He had been a founder of the company 25 years earlier, as well as an employee (and board member) at its parent company, Applied Data Research, and had come up to Wakefield to visit the office. As a recent computer science graduate, I was excited about meeting a person who, for all intents and purposes, a "CS Celebrity." Steve tempered my excitement as well as encouraged me in the projects on which I had been assigned for the small compiler development firm.

Steve was a brilliant scientist, a seminal actor in developing field of computer science, and a good person, and will be missed.

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