Amir Pnueli (Hebrew: אמיר פנואלי) was an Israeli computer scientist born on April 22, 1941, and died on November 2, 2009. He received the 1996 Turing Award.
Biography
Pnueli was born in Nahalal, in British-controlled Palestine (now part of Israel). He studied at Tichon Hadash high school in Tel Aviv. He earned a Bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Technion in Haifa and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1967. His doctoral research focused on the topic "Calculation of Tides in the Ocean." Later, during a post-doctoral position at Stanford University, he changed his focus to computer science. His work in this field included studies on temporal logic and model checking, especially related to fairness properties of concurrent systems.
After returning to Israel, Pnueli worked as a researcher. He founded and led the computer science department at Tel Aviv University. In 1981, he became a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute. From 1999 until his death, he also taught at the Computer Science Department of New York University in the United States. He previously worked as an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the Joseph Fourier University.
During his career, Pnueli started two technology companies. He had three children and, at the time of his death, had four grandchildren.
Pnueli passed away on November 2, 2009, due to a brain hemorrhage.
Awards and honours
- In 1996, Pnueli was given the Turing Award for important work that introduced a type of logic called temporal logic into computing and for helping to check if computer programs and systems work correctly.
- On May 30, 1997, Pnueli received an honorary doctorate from the school of science and technology at Uppsala University in Sweden.
- In 1999, he became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering as a Foreign Associate.
- In 2000, he was awarded the Israel Prize for his work in computer science.
- In 2007, he was named a member of the Association for Computing Machinery.
- The Weizmann Institute of Science holds a special lecture series to remember him.