Robert M. Graham is a computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

 and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts

University of Massachusetts

This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...

. He was born to a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 emigrant.

He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. While working at the UofM's Computing Center he co-authored two compiler

Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

s, GAT for the IBM 650

IBM 650

The IBM 650 was one of IBM’s early computers, and the world’s first mass-produced computer. It was announced in 1953, and over 2000 systems were produced between the first shipment in 1954 and its final manufacture in 1962...

 and MAD for the IBM 704/709/7090

IBM 7090

The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation...

.

In 1963 he moved to MIT to participate in the development of Multics

Multics

Multics was an influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964 in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

, one of the first virtual memory

Virtual memory

In computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels. This technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various forms of computer data storage , allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, "virtual" memory, which...

 time-sharing

Time-sharing

Time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking. Its introduction in the 1960s, and emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s, represents a major technological shift in the history of computing.By allowing a large...

 computer operating systems. He had responsibility for protection

Protection mechanism

In computer science, protection mechanisms are built into a computer architecture to support the enforcement of security policies. A simple definition of a security policy is "to set who may use what information in a computer system"....

, dynamic linking, and other key system kernel

Kernel (computing)

In computing, the kernel is the main component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's resources...

 areas.

Later worked at University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

, and the University of Massachusetts

University of Massachusetts

This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...

. Officially retired in 1996, but continued to teach until the end of 2003.

In 1996 he was inducted as a Fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of the Association for Computing Machinery

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

.

He is the author of numerous books and professional articles.