David Gelernter

David Gelernter is professor of computer science at Yale, contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies (a small New Haven start-up), and board member of the National Endowment for the Arts (nominated 3/02, senate confirm. 10/02). He is the author of several books and many technical articles; also of essays, art criticism and fiction.

Gelernter's book Mirror Worlds (1991) "foresaw" the World Wide Web (according to Reuters, 3/20/01; "Gelernter prophesied the rise of the World Wide Web," according to John Markoff, technology writer and New York Times reporter); Mirror World was also reportedly one inspiration for the programming language Java. "Breaking out of the box" (NY Times Magazine, '97) forecast and described the advent of less-ugly computers (Apple's iMac arrived in '98). The "tuple spaces" introduced in Gelernter's Linda system (1983) are the basis of many computer-communication and distributed programming systems worldwide. His "lifestreams" system is the basis for Mirror Worlds Technologies' software.

Gelernter's essays are widely anthologized (for example in J. Brockman, ed., The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (B&N, 2003) and The Next Fifty Years: new essays from 25 of the world's leading scientists (Vintage, 2002); R. Stolley, ed., Life Magazine . Century of Change, (Little Brown, 2001); the ACM's [Association for Computing Machinery] 50th Anniversary Festschrift). Gelernter is "one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time,. according to Bill Joy, founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems. John Schwartz wrote in the New York Times that "By the standards of the computing world, Mr. Gelernter is a rock star. One of the truly certified Smart Guys." (July 2, 2001.)

He is the author of The Muse in the Machine (1994, about poetry and AI), the novel 1939 (1995 -- "wonderful, absorbing, original and striking," Boston Globe; "original and arresting," Washington Post; "One of the most moving love stories I have ever read," Commentary), the memoir Drawing Life (1997, a New York Times "notable book of the year"), Machine Beauty (Basic Books "master classes," 1998, about aesthetics and technology) and other books; he has published in Time, Commentary, ArtNews, Washington Post, Scientific American and many others, reviewed books for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired and many others; recent talks include the Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (spring '03), a "keynote interview" at "Agenda 2003" (fall '02), keynote talks at Intl. Wireless World ('02), PC Expo ('01), and the 2002 Organick Lecture in Computer Science at Univ Utah. His paintings were exhibited ("Recent Works") at the Yale Slifka Center in spring '01; his 5-part series "Judaism Beyond Words" is now complete and a new novel partway through in the pages of Commentary.

Recent articles by David Gelernter