Alan Kay

Name: Alan Curtis Kay

Born: May 17, 1940

Computer-related contributions

• Help create the idea of a laptop computer with his Dynabook protoType while at Xerox PARC.
• Helped with programming the overlapping windowing graphical user interface GUI while at Xerox PARC.
• Helped develop Ethernet, laser printing, and the client-server network model.
• With Adele Goldberg and Daniel Ingalls, helped develop the Smalltalk programming language at Xerox PARC.
• Help develop the Dynabook concept that helped pave the wave for laptop and tablet style computers.

Honors and awards

• ACM Turing Award (2004).
• Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology (2004).
• Charles Stark Draper Prize (2004).

Related computer pioneers

• Adele Goldberg
• Daniel Ingalls
• Charles Thacker
• Douglas Engelbart
• Robert Metcalfe
• Robert Stein

Quotes

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

"Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves."