tony hoare for the bicycle racer see tony hoar sir charles antony richard hoare frs freng education and early life born in colombo ceylon now sri lanka to british parents tony hoares father was a colonial civil servant and his mother was the daughter of a tea planter hoare was educated in england at the dragon school in oxford and the kings school in canterbury research and career in 1960 hoare left the soviet union and began working at elliott brothers ltd hoares most significant work has been in the following areas his sorting and selection algorithm quicksort and quickselect hoare logic the formal language communicating sequential processes csp used to specify the interactions between concurrent processes structuring computer operating systems using the monitor concept and the axiomatic specification of programming languages apologies and retractions speaking at a software conference called qcon london in 2009 he apologised for inventing the null reference call it my billiondollar mistake it was the invention of the null reference in 1965 at that time i was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language algol w my goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe with checking performed automatically by the compiler but i couldnt resist the temptation to put in a null reference simply because it was so easy to implement this has led to innumerable errors vulnerabilities and system crashes which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years for many years under his leadership his oxford department worked on formal specification languages such as csp and z these did not achieve the expected takeup by industry and in 1995 hoare was led to reflect upon the original assumptions ten years ago researchers into formal methods and i was the most mistaken among them predicted that the programming world would embrace with gratitude every assistance promised by formalisation to solve the problems of reliability that arise when programs get large and more safetycritical programs have now got very large and very critical well beyond the scale which can be comfortably tackled by formal methods there have been many problems and failures but these have nearly always been attributable to inadequate analysis of requirements or inadequate management control it has turned out that the world just does not suffer significantly from the kind of problem that our research was originally intended to solve books oj dahl e w dijkstra and c a r hoare 1972 structured programming academic press isbn0122005503 oclc23937947 c a r hoare 1985 communicating sequential processes prentice hall international series in computer science isbn9780131532717 hardback or isbn9780131532892 paperback available online at httpwwwusingcspcom in pdf format c a r hoare and m j c gordon 1992 mechanised reasoning and hardware design prentice hall international series in computer science isbn0135724058 oclc25712842 c a r hoare and he jifeng 1998 unifying theories of programming prentice hall international series in computer science isbn0134587618 oclc38199961 personal in 1962 hoare married jill pym a member of his research team awards and honours distinguished fellow of the british computer society 1978 acm turing award for fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages the award was presented to him at the acm annual conference in nashville tennessee on 27 october 1980 by walter carlson chairman of the awards committee a transcript of hoares speech harry h goode memorial award 1981 fellow of the royal society 1982 honorary doctorate of science by the queens university belfast 1987 honorary doctorate of science from the university of bath 1993 honorary fellow kellogg college oxford 1998 knighted for services to education and computer science 2000 kyoto prize for information science 2000 fellow 2005 computer history museum chm in mountain view california fellow of the museum for development of the quicksort algorithm and for lifelong contributions to the theory of programming languages 2006 honorary doctorate from heriotwatt university 2007 honorary doctorate of science from the department of informatics of the athens university of economics and business aueb 2007 friedrich l bauerprize technical university of munich 2007 programming languages achievement award 2011 ieee john von neumann medal 2011 honorary doctorate university of warsaw 2012 honorary doctorate complutense university of madrid 2013 this article incorporates text available under the cc by 40 license wikimedia commons has media related to c a r hoare wikiquote has quotations related to tony hoare vtesoftware engineeringfields computer programming requirements engineering software deployment software design software maintenance software testing systems analysis formal methods concepts data modeling enterprise architecture functional specification modeling language orthogonality programming paradigm software software archaeology software architecture software configuration management software development methodology software development process software quality software quality assurance software verification and validation structured analysis orientations agile aspectoriented object orientation ontology service orientation sdlc modelsdevelopmental agile eup executable uml incremental model iterative model prototype model rad up scrum spiral model vmodel waterfall model xp other spice cmmi data model er model function model information model metamodeling object model systems model view model languages idef uml usl sysml softwareengineers victor basili kent beck grady booch fred brooks barry boehm peter chen danese cooper ward cunningham tom demarco edsger w dijkstra delores m etter martin fowler adele goldstine margaret hamilton c a r hoare lois haibt mary jean harrold grace hopper watts humphrey michael a jackson ivar jacobson alan kay nancy leveson stephen j mellor bertrand meyer david parnas trygve reenskaug winston w royce james rumbaugh mary shaw peri tarr elaine weyuker niklaus wirth edward yourdon related fields computer science computer engineering project management risk management systems engineering category commons vtea m turing award laureates1960s alan perlis 1966 maurice vincent wilkes 1967 richard hamming 1968 marvin minsky 1969 1970s james h wilkinson 1970 john mccarthy 1971 edsger w dijkstra 1972 charles bachman 1973 donald knuth 1974 allen newell herbert a simon 1975 michael o rabin dana scott 1976 john backus 1977 robert w floyd 1978 kenneth e iverson 1979 1980s tony hoare 1980 edgar f codd 1981 stephen cook 1982 ken thompson dennis ritchie 1983 niklaus wirth 1984 richard karp 1985 john hopcroft robert tarjan 1986 john cocke 1987 ivan sutherland 1988 william kahan 1989 1990s fernando j corbat 1990 robin milner 1991 butler lampson 1992 juris hartmanis richard e stearns 1993 edward feigenbaum raj reddy 1994 manuel blum 1995 amir pnueli 1996 douglas engelbart 1997 jim gray 1998 fred brooks 1999 2000s andrew yao 2000 olejohan dahl kristen nygaard 2001 ron rivest adi shamir leonard adleman 2002 alan kay 2003 vint cerf bob kahn 2004 peter naur 2005 frances e allen 2006 edmund m clarke e allen emerson joseph sifakis 2007 barbara liskov 2008 charles p thacker 2009 2010s leslie g valiant 2010 judea pearl 2011 shafi goldwasser silvio micali 2012 leslie lamport 2013 michael stonebraker 2014 martin hellman whitfield diffie 2015 tim bernerslee 2016 john l hennessy david patterson 2017 authority control worldcat identities acm dl 81460641326 bibsys 90243370 dblp hcarhoare gnd 119103265 isni 0000 0001 2146 7986 lccn n84148204 lnb 000065181 mgp 45760 ndl 00443453 selibr 61170 snac w6vt663z sudoc 059577576 viaf 108123782 