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Paul W. Abrahams

Paul W. Abrahams, Sc.D., CCP, is the author of TeX for the Impatient, a book whose success inspired UNIX for the Impatient. A consulting computer scientist and past president of the Association for Computing Machinery, he specializes in programming languages, design and implementation of software systems, and technical writing. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956 and his doctorate in mathematics there in 1963, studying artificial intelligence under Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy and writing his dissertation on "Machine Verification of Mathematical Proof". He is one of the designers of the first LISP system and also the designer of the CIMS PL/I system, which he developed while a professor at New York University. He also participated in the design of the Software Engineering Design Language (SEDL), developed at the IBM T.J. Watson Laboratories. Currently he is working on the design of SPLASH, a Systems Programming LAnguage for Software Hackers and on a new book, OS/2 for the Impatient. In 1995 he was honored as a Fellow of the ACM. Paul resides in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he writes, hacks, hikes, hunts wild mushrooms, and listens to classical music. His Internet address is abrahams@acm.org.