Friedemann Mattern is a German scientist.

After studying computer science

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...

 with a minor in communication sciences at the University of Bonn

University of Bonn

The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...

, Mattern became a VLSI

Very-large-scale integration

Very-large-scale integration is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device.The first semiconductor...

 design and parallelism researcher at Kaiserslautern University of Technology.
He got his doctorate degree in 1989 after writing a dissertation on distributed algorithms

Distributed algorithms

A distributed algorithm is an algorithm designed to run on computer hardware constructed from interconnected processors. Distributed algorithms are used in many varied application areas of distributed computing, such as telecommunications, scientific computing, distributed information processing,...

. In 1991 Mattern was offered a teaching position at Saarland University

Saarland University

Saarland University is a university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland, and Homburg. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in 8 faculties that cover all major fields of science...

 in Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....

; later he moved to Darmstadt University of Technology

Darmstadt University of Technology

The Technische Universität Darmstadt, abbreviated TU Darmstadt, is a university in the city of Darmstadt, Germany...

, where he started the program Electronic Market Infrastructure. In 1999 Mattern responded to ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....

's call for the establishment of a Ubiquitous Computing research group. Since fall 2002, he has been on the Institute for Pervasive Computing Founding Board. Currently he is in charge of the Distributed Systems program at ETH Zurich. Mattern is also a co-founder of the common M-Lab Competency Center at ETH Zurich and the University of St. Gallen

University of St. Gallen

The University of St. Gallen is a public research university located in St. Gallen, Switzerland. It is specialized in the fields of business administration, economics, law, and international affairs. The University of St. Gallen is also known as HSG, which is an abbreviation of its former German...

.

Together with Colin Fidge, he developed the vector clock algorithm, which allows to generate a partial ordering of events in a distributed system and to detect causality violations.

Publications

• Distributed Algorithms for Termination Detection
• Virtual Time and Global States of Distributed Systems
• Detecting Causal Relationships in Distributed Computations: In Search of the Holy Grail
• Social, Economic, and Ethical Implications of Ambient Intelligence and Ubiquitous Computing
• Vom Verschwinden des Computers - Die Vision des Ubiquitous Computing
• Das Internet der Dinge: Ubiquitous Computing und RFID in der Praxis. Visionen, Technologien, Anwendungen, Handlungsanleitungen ( 2005, Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York, ISBN 3-540-24003-9) (as editor alongside Elgar Fleisch)