On December 3 and 4 of 2004, the Computer Science Department at Indiana University hosted this conference on the occasion of Dan's sixtieth birthday. It brought together many of his former and present students, colleagues, research collaborators, co-authors and friends.
The conference was kicked off on Friday morning by a welcoming message by Andrew Hanson, the chairman of the Computer Science Department. Guy Steele, a Sun Fellow at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, delivered a one-hour keynote address entitled "Dan Friedman: Cool Ideas." Twenty other speakers gave half-hour talks on both Friday and Saturday in Lindley Hall 102. This report includes the conference program with the names of the speakers and the titles of their talks. It also includes a list of all of the people who registered for the conference.
At the luncheon in the Federal Room in the Indiana Memorial Union, several people related anecdotes about Dan and he was presented with several gifts, including a lovely portrait of Dan drawn by his thesis advisor, Terrance Pratt, and a copy of the first edition of The Little Lisper signed by everyone present. The highlight of the luncheon was Dan's heart-warming speech of appreciation, which concluded with his relating some touching anecdotes about his career. Dan's whole family, Mary, Robbie, Rachel, Sara, Dorothy, Jacob and Lola Goldberg, and Shannon Romine, were all present.
Saturday evening was party time in the Faculty Club of the Indiana Memorial Union. With tasty hors d'oeuvres and various liquid refreshments, many small groups formed to reminisce. Lively klezmer music was provided by a band made up of five students at the IU School of Music. Jonathan Salter, the son of Richard Salter at Oberlin, played piano and clarinet in the band, and made the arrangements to have the band play for us. The last part of the evening was again devoted to various people relating their experiences with Dan. We all had a great time. Everyone gave a strong expression of appreciation to Jill Cowden for so efficiently handling the complicated arrangements that enabled the conference to proceed so smoothly.
Over the last three decades, Dan Friedman has explored many cool ideas about programming languages. We examine a handful of them and discuss their influence on other work, notably the development of Scheme.
Introduction by David Wise (video):
There was and is too much good to say introducing Guy Steele, and I
set out to describe the special interaction between him and Dan and
IU, in so many ways through the years. In doing so, I muffed the
peak of that collaboration: the 1982 ACM Conference on Lisp and
Functional programming held at Skibo on the CMU campus (the first of
an ongoing series.)
Key point not said: Guy was Local Arrangements Chair for that
meeting which Dan and I organized, and it was only through his offices
that photographs were taken at that still remarkable event. I showed
a few of them and, now that video is to be posted for posterity,
complete captions are necessary. The event was a small reception for
the conference's organizers held immediately before the conference
banquet on August 17, 1982.Picture 1: Alan J. Perlis, then at Yale but who won ACM's first Alan
J. Turing Award for his work at Carnegie Tech (CMU).
Picture 2: Nico Habermann, Alan's successor as Head of CMU's
computing departments, Joe and Gabrielle Stoy, then of Oxford. Alan
with back to camera.
Picture 3: Alonzo Church, Virginia Curry, Anetta Rosser, J. Barkley
Rosser, with Haskell Curry in front.
Picture 4: Richard Gabriel and Barbara Steele.
Picture 5: L. Peter Deutsch, William Woods, Gerry Sussman, and Dan
with back to the camera.The photographs are distributed here by permission of ACM.
Ashley, Mike
Blandy, Jim
Byrd, William
Duba, Bruce
Dunn, Michael
Dybvig, Kent
Felleisen, Matthias
Filman, Robert
Findler, Robby
Fisler, Kathi
Flatt. Matthew
Friedman, Dan
Ganz, Steve
Garcia, Ron
Ghuloum, Abdulaziz
Hanson, Andrew
Haynes, Chris
Hilsdale, Erik
Hofstader, Douglas
Johnson, Steve
Jones, Rhys Price
Kiselyov, Oleg
Kohlbecker, Eugene
Krishnamurthi, Shriram
Lawall, Julia
Lee, Shinn-Der
Lewis, Bil
Marshall, James
Mendhekar, Anurag
Menzel, Suzanne
Millikin, Kevin
Mueller, Chris
Nienart, John
Prior, Robert
Rossie, Jon
Sabry, Amr
Salter, Richard
Sanders, Nathan
Shan, Chung-Chieh (Ken)
Shivers, Olin
Siek, Jeremy
Siskind, Jeffrey
Smith, Leon
Sobel, Jonathan
Sooriamurthi, Raja
Springer, George
Stamm, Sid
Steele, Guy
Sussman, Gerald
Vizzoto, Juliana
Wand, Mitchell
Widom, Jennifer
Willcock, Jeremiah
Winebarger, Lynn
Wise, David
Wright, Andrew
Julia Lawall took the initiative to contact all of the participants and plan the program. The local arrangements for such things as accomodations, lecture hall, luncheon, and reception were handled by George Springer and Jill Cowden. Andrew Hanson and Linda Barchet also helped with many of the administrative details that made the conference possible. The Web page used to announce the conference and report on it has been designed and maintained by Chris Haynes. Thanks to Duane Busick for his videos of the talks, and to William Byrd for uploading them to the Web.