John L. Hennessy
John L. Hennessy | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Leroy Hennessy September 22, 1952 Huntington, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Computer scientist, academic administrator |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Known for | Co-founder of MIPS Technologies and Atheros; 10th president of Stanford University; chairman of Alphabet Inc.; Turing Award laureate |
John Leroy Hennessy (born September 22, 1952) is a prominent American computer scientist and currently serves as the chairman of Alphabet Inc.. He is a co-founder of both MIPS Technologies and Atheros, and held the position of Stanford University's 10th president from 2000 until 2016, after which Marc Tessier-Lavigne took over. Marc Andreessen famously referred to him as "the godfather of Silicon Valley."
Together with David Patterson, Hennessy was awarded the 2017 Turing Award for their groundbreaking work on the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, a design that supports approximately 99% of newly produced computer chips.
Early life and education
Hennessy grew up in Huntington, New York, one of six siblings. His father worked as an aerospace engineer, while his mother transitioned from teaching to focus on raising the family. He descends from Irish-Catholic ancestors who immigrated to the United States during the potato famine in the 19th century.
He obtained his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University, followed by both master's and doctoral degrees in computer science at Stony Brook University.
Career and research
Beginning his academic career at Stanford in 1977, Hennessy initiated the MIPS project in 1981 aimed at creating RISC processors. To commercialize this innovation, he founded MIPS Computer Systems Inc. in 1984. By 1987, he was appointed to the Willard and Inez Kerr Bell Endowed Professorship in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
He led Stanford's Computer System Laboratory between 1989 and 1993, chaired the Computer Science Department from 1994 to 1996, and served as Dean of the School of Engineering from 1996 until 1999. In 1999, he became Provost before succeeding Gerhard Casper as president of Stanford in 2000. His compensation in 2008 totaled $1,091,589, placing him 23rd among university presidents across the United States.
Hennessy has held board positions at major technology firms including Google (Alphabet Inc.), Cisco Systems, Atheros Communications, and has been involved with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. In 2008, he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.
In recognition of his contributions, he received a khata from the 14th Dalai Lama in 2010. That same year, he co-wrote an editorial alongside Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust supporting the DREAM Act, although it ultimately failed to pass Congress.
As a founding judge for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering established in 2013, Hennessy has continued to participate on its judging panel for subsequent awards.
In June 2015, he announced his intention to resign as Stanford's president in 2016. During that year, he co-established the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program with a $750 million endowment designed to fully fund graduate studies at Stanford for up to three years; its first cohort enrolled in fall 2018.
In February 2018, Hennessy was appointed Chairman of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company.
Alongside David A. Patterson, he co-authored seminal textbooks on computer architecture—Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface and Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach—which introduced the DLX RISC architecture and have been extensively used since their release in 1990.
Additionally, Hennessy played a role in modernizing Donald Knuth's conceptual computer model by transitioning it from MIX to MMIX, utilized within The Art of Computer Programming.
Awards and honors
- Inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1992 in recognition of advancements in computer architecture, software methodologies for Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC), and methods for quantitative performance assessment.
- Recipient of the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 1994 for significant achievements in the quantitative analysis of computer architectures and the successful realization of RISC designs.
- Named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1997.
- Honored with the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 2001.
- Awarded the Association for Computing Machinery SIGARCH ISCA Influential Paper Award in 2004 for a seminal 1989 publication on advanced cache hierarchy designs.
- Designated Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2007 for foundational contributions to engineering education and computer architecture.
- Received the prestigious IEEE Medal of Honor in 2012, recognizing groundbreaking work on RISC processor architecture and leadership within computer engineering and academia.
- Conferred an Honorary Degree in Mathematics by the University of Waterloo in 2012, acknowledging impact on contemporary computer architecture and higher education.
- Elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in the United Kingdom, 2017.
- Awarded the Turing Award in 2017 for a rigorous, quantitative methodology to designing and evaluating computer architectures that profoundly influenced microprocessor development.
- Honored with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies, 2020.
- Received the Clark Kerr Award from UC Berkeley’s Academic Senate in 2020, celebrating exceptional leadership in higher education.
- Joint recipient of the Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering in 2022, alongside Steve Furber, David Patterson, and Sophie Wilson, for pioneering contributions to RISC chip invention and development.
Selected publications
- Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach
- Patterson, David A.; Hennessy, John L. Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Morgan Kaufmann, 1994.
- Gharachorloo, Kourosh et al. "Memory consistency and event ordering in scalable shared-memory multiprocessors." Proceedings of the 17th annual international symposium on Computer Architecture, 1990.
- Lenoski, Daniel et al. "The directory-based cache coherence protocol for the DASH multiprocessor." Proceedings of the 17th annual international symposium on Computer Architecture, 1990.
Personal life
Hennessy is married to Andrea Berti, whom he first met during their high school years.