Charles P. Thacker
Charles P. Thacker | |
|---|---|
| Born | Charles Patrick Thacker 26 February 1943 Pasadena, California, U.S. |
| Died | 12 June 2017 (aged 74) Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Computer engineer |
| Known for | Designing the Xerox Alto, co-creating Ethernet LAN, contributions to laser printing and tablet computing |
Charles Patrick "Chuck" Thacker (February 26, 1943 – June 12, 2017) was a trailblazer in American computer engineering. He is renowned for designing the Xerox Alto, the inaugural computer featuring a mouse-operated graphical user interface (GUI).
Biography
Born in Pasadena, California on February 26, 1943, Thacker was the son of Ralph Scott Thacker, an electrical engineer specializing in aeronautics, and Mattie Fern Cheek, who largely raised him and his brother independently.
He completed a Bachelor of Science degree in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. The following year, he became involved with "Project Genie" at Berkeley, contributing to the creation of the groundbreaking Berkeley Timesharing System. Together with Butler Lampson and others, he co-established the Berkeley Computer Corporation, where he was responsible for designing the processor and memory architecture. Although BCC did not achieve commercial success, its team formed the foundation of the Computer Systems Laboratory at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s at PARC, Thacker spearheaded the development of the Xerox Alto personal computer system, co-created the Ethernet LAN, and played a significant role in projects such as developing the first laser printer.
In 1983, he co-founded the Systems Research Center (SRC) at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Later, in 1997, he joined Microsoft Research to assist in launching Microsoft Research Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Upon returning to the United States, Thacker applied his expertise from PARC’s "interim Dynabook" and DEC SRC’s pen-based handheld device known as the Lectrice to design hardware for Microsoft's Tablet PC.
Between 2006 and 2010, he engaged with the Berkeley Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors (RAMP) initiative, utilizing the Berkeley Emulation Engine FPGA platform to investigate novel processor architectures. He also provided guidance on subsequent platforms BEE2 and BEE3 and leveraged their hardware for research purposes.
Thacker’s work intersected with initial developments related to the open-source RISC-V processor architecture, addressing a critical need identified during RAMP.
He passed away at age 74 on June 12, 2017, in Palo Alto, California due to complications from esophageal cancer.
Awards
Thacker was honored as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1994.
In 1996, he received recognition as a Distinguished Alumnus in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.
He was awarded the prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2004 alongside Alan C. Kay, Butler W. Lampson, and Robert W. Taylor.
In 2007, he earned the IEEE John von Neumann Medal and was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his leadership in creating the Xerox PARC Alto and advancing networked personal computers and laser printing technologies.
The Association for Computing Machinery bestowed upon him the 2009 Turing Award, presented in 2010, recognizing his pioneering work on the design and implementation of the Alto, acknowledged as the first modern personal computer, as well as his contributions to both Ethernet and tablet computing.
Additionally, he received an honorary doctorate from Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology and held the title of Technical Fellow at Microsoft.
Further reading
- "Q&A: Transitioning from Single-Core to Multicore," an interview with Charles P. Thacker conducted by Leah Hoffmann, published in Communications of the ACM, vol. 53, no. 7, 2010.
External links
- Pages with script errors
- Articles with short description
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- No local image but image on Wikidata
- 1943 births
- 2017 deaths
- UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni
- Computer designers
- Scientists at PARC (company)
- Digital Equipment Corporation people
- Microsoft technical fellows
- Turing Award laureates
- American computer scientists
- Draper Prize winners
- Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
- Scientists from Pasadena, California
- Deaths from esophageal cancer in California
- 1994 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery