Malcolm (Doug) Douglas McIlroy

Renowned for seminal work on software componentization and the Unix pipeline implementation, McIlroy is also known for developing several Unix tools, such as spell, diff, sort, join, graph, speak, and tr.

Dr. McIlroy earned his Bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University in 1954, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from MIT in 1959 for his thesis On the Solution of the Differential Equations of Conical Shells. He joined Bell Laboratories in 1958, and from 1965–1986 was head of its Computing Techniques Research Department (the birthplace of the Unix operating system). Thereafter he has served as Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. McIlroy retired from Bell Labs in 1997, and from 2007 has served as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College.