Andrew Appel
Encyclopedia
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. He is especially well-known because of his compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
books, the Modern Compiler Implementation in ML (ISBN 0-521-58274-1) series, as well as Compiling With Continuations (ISBN 0-521-41695-7). He is also a major contributor to the Standard ML of New Jersey
Standard ML of New Jersey
Standard ML of New Jersey is a compiler and programming environment for Standard ML. Aside from its runtime system, which is written in C, SML/NJ is written in Standard ML...
compiler, along with David MacQueen, John H. Reppy, Matthias Blume and others and one of the authors of Rog-O-Matic
Rog-O-Matic
Rog-O-Matic is a bot developed in 1984 that plays the computer game Rogue.Described as a "belligerent expert system", Rog-O-Matic performs well when tested against expert Rogue players, even winning the game. Because all information in Rogue is communicated to the player via ASCII text, Rog-O-Matic...
.
Appel gained an A.B. summa cum laude
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
(physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
) at Princeton University in 1981, and a Ph.D. (computer science) at Carnegie-Mellon University, in 1985. He became an ACM Fellow in 1998.
From July 2005 to July 2006, he was a visiting researcher at the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique
Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique
The National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control is a French national research institution focusing on computer science, control theory and applied mathematics.It was created in 1967 at Rocquencourt near Paris, part of Plan Calcul...
(INRIA), Rocquencourt
Rocquencourt
Rocquencourt is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France.It is mostly known for:* hosting a research unit of INRIA ;...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, on sabbatical from Princeton.
Andrew Appel campaigns on issues related to the interaction of law and computer technology. He testified in the penalty phase of the Microsoft antitrust
United States v. Microsoft
United States v. Microsoft was a set of civil actions filed against Microsoft Corporation pursuant to the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 Section 1 and 2 on May 8, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states. Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor...
case in 2002. He is opposed to the introduction of some computerized voting machine
Voting machine
Voting machines are the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic equipment , that is used to define ballots; to cast and count votes; to report or display election results; and to maintain and produce any audit trail information...
s, which he deemed untrustworthy. In 2007, he received attention when he purchased a number of voting machines for the purpose of investigating their security.
Andrew Appel is the son of noteworthy Mathematician Kenneth Appel
Kenneth Appel
Kenneth Ira Appel is a mathematician who in 1976, with colleague Wolfgang Haken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, solved one of the most famous problems in mathematics, the four-color theorem...
.